The president of the 16my world conference on biodiversity (COP16), Susana Muhamad, had promised that the end of this meeting would be “exciting”. The Colombian Minister of the Environment was partly right: the final stretch of the negotiations was marked by moments of tension and confrontation, but also by applause and shouts of joy, which attest to important progress.
Above all, this ending was particularly abrupt: the plenary session was abruptly interrupted on Saturday morning, November 2, after the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) found that a quorum had no longer been reached. Some of the representatives from some 200 countries had to leave Cali the day after the official end of the conference. “I am the last representative of my delegation”launched the Panamanian spokesperson.
Billed as the “COP of implementation”, aimed at ensuring that states’ pledges in favor of nature are fulfilled on the ground, COP16 ends without a decision on two of the most crucial issues in the negotiations: neither the question of the mobilization of financial resources nor the global framework for monitoring and evaluating progress could not be discussed.
“If decisions have not been adopted, it is because there is still not enough trust and understanding between States, explained Susana Muhamad just after suspending the COP with a hammer blow. But on the other hand, there were other very difficult decisions, about marine areas, genetic resources or indigenous peoples, and the countries managed to make them. » “This end of the COP has the flavor of unfinished business, For his part, Moumouni Ouedraogo, representative of Burkina Faso, lamented. While there has been notable progress, we come away feeling like we have not completed our work. »
“We have a plan”
Two years after the adoption of unprecedented commitments at COP15 in Montreal (Canada) to fight against the collapse of life, such as protecting 30% of land and seas or halving the risks related to pesticides , COP16 should allow efforts to be accelerated. . From Cali, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, recalled the extent to which the collapse of biodiversity constitutes a “existential crisis”.
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