By Gloria Dickie
MONTREAL (Reuters) – With countries digging into their positions at U.N. negotiations for a global deal to protect nature, delegates were looking to government ministers on Thursday to help resolve key sticking points around financing and land conservation commitments.
The COP15 talks in Montreal have made progress in considering some 23 conservation targets to go into the final pact before the summit ends on Dec. 19, delegates said.
But entrenched positions by the European Union, Latin American countries, and the African group were keeping the talks snagged on the most contentious issues – providing billions of dollars of funding for conservation, and protecting at least 30% of land and sea by 2030.
Government ministers arriving Thursday from more than 120 countries could help move the talks forward.
“It is still a bumpy road,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
MONEY MATTERS
Developing countries are pushing for wealthy nations to provide some $100 billion per year until 2030 to help finance conservation efforts in their territories.
So far, they have had little success. During a session on mobilizing finance for protecting nature late Tuesday, delegates from countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa walked out just after midnight to protest the reluctance by wealthy nations at the summit to discuss new funds.
“There were several funding proposals brought forward by developing countries,” said a negotiator from a Latin American country. “We were told that none would work.”
Many developing countries are located in the tropics and still have vast expanses of intact forest, containing most of the world’s biological diversity.
The EU, already the biggest donor to biodiversity initiatives, would likely be expected to foot much of the bill as the largest bloc of wealthy nations. The United States, because it is not part of the CBD, would have no funding obligation.
The EU pushed back against such calls on Wednesday, saying it was important to look at other funding sources — private donors, development banks and philanthropies.
“It’s absolutely unrealistic to have $100 billion just from development funds,” EU Environment Commissioner Virginius Sinkevicius told Reuters. Countries shouldn’t be “overpromising what we are not able to deliver.”
Negotiators had earlier discussed a total financial target of $200 billion a year from both governments and the private sector. But as of Thursday, it was unclear if the final pact would include a target at all.
SLASHING SUBSIDIES
Canceling subsidies for businesses that harm nature can help address the financing gap, experts say.
One of the proposed targets could see countries agree to eliminate or phase out these subsidies by at least $500 billion per year.
While some progress has been made on this target, negotiators have not yet finalized the numerical target. And wording to explicitly address subsidies given to agriculture and fisheries has been removed in recent days.
“There has been debate about whether to retain the language on ‘eliminating’ subsidies,” said Pepe Clarke, oceans practice leader at World Wildlife Fund. “If the language on eliminating harmful subsidies is removed, that would actually be a step backwards from Aichi”, the failed set of targets that guided global conservation from 2011 to 2020.
30-BY-30
A global target to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, known informally as 30-by-30, has proved “very difficult to resolve,” said Francis Ogwal, co-chair of the negotiations.
Negotiators have yet to agree on whether the target should be carried out at the global or national level.
Scientists and campaigners worried that a national-level commitment could leave swathes of ocean neglected. A global commitment, however, would put more burden on larger, nature-rich countries.
There are also concerns that countries could focus on protecting areas that are already degraded or that have relatively few species to protect.
FINAL DAYS
If negotiations don’t soon progress, observers have questioned whether China, which holds the summit’s rotating presidency, will step in and deliver their own text to be adopted. A similar intervention unfolded during overtime climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last month.
Experts say the deal is urgent, as more than 1 million species could vanish by century’s end.
Habitat loss, pollution, and climate change are the key threats to plants and animals, robbing them of space, shifting their home ranges, and making them sick. As much as 40% of land has been degraded by human activity.
Only about 15% of the world’s land and less than 8% of the oceans are currently protected.
(Reporting by Gloria Dickie; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)
