What to expect from the Biodiversity COP16?
Published on: October 22, 2024
On 21 October – 1 November 2024, climate policy makers, scientists, civil society, journalists and the business sector all gather for two weeks in Cali, Colombia, for the biennial UN summit on biodiversity. What are the stakes at the Biodiversity COP16? And what results can we expect?
Andreas Gyllenhammar, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sweco, dives into the expectations and analyses the setting of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
What is the Biodiversity COP?
At Sweco, we have engaged with COP meetings since 2009. Climate COPs, that is. Deconstructing the acronym COP reveals the not so exciting explanation Conference of the Parties. This is UN lingua and marks the yearly meetings of parties under a certain convention. While the UNFCCCs climate COPs have taken the main stage, there is another UN convention that is quickly gaining international interest, not the least from the private sector – biodiversity. In 1992, at the famous UN Rio Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was formed with only a handful of nations not being signatories, most notably the US (still not on board).
The purpose of the biodiversity convention is threefold:
- To protect ecosystems, species and genetic diversity.
- To ensure sustainable use of biological resources (such as forests, fish stocks etc).
- To guarantee fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources (such as plants or animals used in pharmaceuticals).
This year, the meeting takes place in Cali, Colombia under the theme ”Peace with Nature”.
Besides the biodiversity COP16 and the upcoming climate COP29 there is a third influential COP this year, under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Increased urgency and momentum for biodiversity
Although climate has taken the centre stage for many years now, I have noticed a slow but steady global increase in attention given to biodiversity. I see three main reasons for this:
The urgency of the matter
We are experiening an unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss. According to the UN Global Biodiversity Outlook, 1 million species are currently at risk of extinction, many within decades. WWF follows the change in population sizes of more than 5,000 species and in the newly released Living Planet Report the results are alarming. The average decline between 1970 and 2020 is 73% and the analysis is that we are approaching dangerous tipping points that can be sudden and irreversible.
The link to climate change (science, solutions and policy)
Next to decarbonising the energy sector, nature is regarded as the best solution to safeguard our climate. Climate change exacerbates biodiversity loss, and conversely, loss of biodiversity weakens nature’s ability to regulate the climate. Healthy ecosystems absorb carbon dioxide and buffer the impacts of climate change. Furthermore, biodiversity loss reduces nature’s resilience to climate change, leading to a vicious cycle of environmental degradation. In essence: if we restore nature, we reduce carbon emissions and if we reduce carbon emissions, we restore nature. In terms of policy, I see a lot of momentum from the fact that the biodiversity issues do not have to invent the wheel again. They take a lot of inspiration and solutions from how the climate issue has advanced. For example, the emissions trading systems that helped merge decarbonisation within market economies is being replicated with rapid development of biocredits that can be traded. This will contribute to finance habitat restoration and compensate for societies negative impact on nature.
The ”pivotal Paris point”
The Paris Agreement on climate change worked as a tipping point on climate action. Before 2015, the discussion was very much alive on ”whether we should” and ”whether we all agreed” on transforming the world economy to into a decarbonised one. The Agreement was enough to transform the game into a green transition where the majority of nations and not the least, the financial markets, started to compete on not being the last man standing with fossil stranded assets. In 2022, in Montreal, biodiversity got its own Paris moment when COP15 agreed on the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBD) further strengthening the global focus. The years 2020-2030 are considered to be the UN decade for ecosystem restoration.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)
So, what do we find inside the landmark GBF nature-protecting deal? It consists of 23 biodiversity targets, now nicely packaged by the same agency that designed the SDGs, the Swedish agency The New Division.
The targets cover the following nature-related aspects:
Nature conservation and protection
- Target 3: Protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land, oceans and inland waters by 2030.
- Target 2: Restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 to enhance biodiversity and ecosystems resilience.
- Target 1: Ensure that by 2030, spatial planning covers all land and sea areas to reduce the impact of human activities on nature.
Sustainable use of biodiversity
- Target 10: Ensure that agriculture, aquaculture and forestry and managed sustainably to conserve biodiversity while ensuring food security.
Reducing harmful pressures
- Target 7: Reduce pollution from plastics, nutrients and other chemicals to non-harmful levels.
- Target 5: Ensure that human activities do not lead to extinction of species.
- Target 8: Mitigate and adapt to climate change through nature-based solutions.
Does this seem like a relevant agenda for a company like Sweco? We surely see that we have an important role to play as enablers in planning and designing societies and businesses to comply with these targets. As in climate, change will follow as legislation, regulations, finance adjust to these targets and business opportunities follow.
What to expect from Biodiversity COP16?
We could expect the usual COP ”phenomenon”. This is both an UN summit with all its formal elements of inauguration, formal meeting agenda points, text negotiations with weighing of words, a tsunami of abbreviations for working committees, stakeholder organisations, launching of new partnerships, initiatives, voluntary commitments and so on. It will also be the largest ever global meeting on biodiversity where 15-20,000 delegates are expected to the negotiations and around 100,000 people visiting and participating in the open green zone activities. There will be a full two weeks of parallel side events covering all aspects of biodiversity and nature from academia, civil society, governmental actors on different levels, businesses from all sectors and concerned citizens.
Putting GBF into practice
This is the first time countries meet since the GBF was formed. In essence, what is at stake in Cali is to put the GBF into practice. To make it operational. What do the targets mean, what further definitions needs to be made? How can it be financed? How do we measure progress? How do we share information?
This will not be a meeting without struggles and the main friction will be in the increased complexity of the matter. In climate, we work with a single currency, an amount of carbon to the atmosphere. We can quantify it, trade with it, calculate emission budgets. However, with biodiversity, we have many currencies and a clear national, regional and local context where species value differs over geographies and time. So, how we calculate the value of biodiversity will be a topic that I will follow more closely. Also, the activity from the business sector and the current interest and maturity of the financial sector.
To be continued. Stay tuned on LinkedIn!
I will soon be on my way to Cali and at the moment I am preparing a busy schedule full of meetings, negotiations and seminars. I’m also looking forward to contributing with Sweco’s combined knowledge in a side event titled ”Circular solutions: Reviving biodiversity, crafting resilient built environments”. At the event, I will present case studies results from our project portfolio and showcase to other delegates how we have achieved nature positive results while creating resilience through circular solutions.
In the following days, I will update with reflections on progress and insights for the business sector from COP16 throughout the meeting here on my LinkedIn page. Stay tuned for more!
About the author of this article
Andreas Gyllenhammar has been attending UNFCCC COP meetings since 2009 as an observer for the business and industry group or as a part of the Swedish delegation. He is Sweco’s liaison officer for WBCSD (the World Business Council on Sustainable Development) and a renowned climate analyst, working with clients to shape climate strategies by interpret science, market shifts to identify and capture opportunities in the transition towards a fossil free future.
