EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global information contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
Biodiversity is the foundation of our existence. The ecosystems that support it are essential for food security, public health and the global economy. However, during the last decades, we have approached biodiversity as something remote – or completely marginal – from development. Even when we measure the total wealth of a country—what is known as the Gross Domestic Product—we only add the value of all the goods and services produced, ignoring the environmental cost of that production. This brings several limitations and makes invisible the importance of biodiversity, since half of the world economy depends on it, as estimated by the World Economic Forum after analyzing 163 economic sectors and their productive chains.
Today, wildlife worldwide presents a global average decline of 69% of the almost 32,000 studied populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2018, according to the 2022 Living Planet Report. The loss of biodiversity and The degradation of the ecosystems that support it represents a significant risk to health, energy supply and food production; limits natural services such as air purification, the water cycle or soil fertilization; and, added to the climate crisis, it brings incalculable economic, social and environmental impacts.
For this reason, COP16 – the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the main biodiversity summit in the world – which will take place in Cali, Colombia, between October 21 and November 1, must be constituted at a stop along the way. A stop to take stock of our relationship with nature. A stop to consider the increasing cost of the degradation and devastation of our ecosystems. A stop for us to question the value system that allows and validates unsustainable growth patterns, and that also drives inequality.
Given the current planetary crossroads, having the summit take place in Latin America represents a responsibility and a unique opportunity. Responsibility because the region has six of the 10 most megadiverse countries in the world: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela. In addition, it has around 40% of the planet’s biodiversity. Countries that, in turn, are home to critical ecosystems, such as the Amazon, tropical dry forests, Andean paramos, mangroves, the Pantanal and coral reefs in the Caribbean. A third of the fresh water is in the region. To give an example of its size, the volume of water that the Amazon River pours into the Atlantic Ocean alone is greater than the sum of the next nine largest rivers in the world.
In 2022, during the biodiversity COP15, 196 countries agreed on a common roadmap to reverse the biodiversity crisis: the Kunming—Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. COP16 is, therefore, the first time that countries meet after the creation of the Framework. And therefore, it marks a milestone in determining how we are going to move from agreement to action.
The historic opportunity we face at COP16 is the imperative need to integrate the protection and good management of biodiversity and the services provided by ecosystems into the sectoral and development strategies of countries, seeking that policy frameworks align incentives economic and market to value them. And this is something that not only involves the public sectors of civil society. The private sector is also called to recognize and disclose the dependencies in the nature of its production processes and to change its business models.
We are faced with the opportunity to decisively foster and promote frameworks and strategies that direct us to change our production and consumption patterns, in such a way that we safeguard the services that nature provides us. This great objective of moving towards food, financial and energy systems that allow us to prosper from the restoration and conservation of natural resources and not at the cost of their destruction, requires concrete actions at the summit.
There are several tools to guide this transition. For example, the National Biological Diversity Strategies and Action Plans – the NBSAPs – whose objective is to specify how each country will contribute to meeting the goals established in the Global Biodiversity Framework. Therefore, one of the great objectives of COP16—and one of the measures of its success—is the presentation and discussion around the NBSAPs of each country.
However, this is only the first step. Because as we seek to reverse biodiversity loss, we need to ensure that our solutions are designed and funded to last over time. For this reason, COP16 must meet the objective of determining new mechanisms that unlock financial resources to advance the goals. Currently, we are in deficit. According to 2019 data, spending on biodiversity conservation ranges between $124 billion and $143 billion annually, while the total estimated needs for biodiversity protection are between $722 billion and $967 billion annually.
For this reason, at The Nature Conservancy, TNC, we have been working, for example, on the implementation of mechanisms that allow developing countries to negotiate their debts, and allocate the proceeds to the protection of biodiversity and climate adaptation. This is an investment with which we can ensure a long-term return.
Another of the success indicators of COP16 has to do with the recognition of the invaluable contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities, who in their territories—which represent close to 22% of the planet’s land—have known how to protect 80%. of biodiversity. The summit must seek to ensure that governments commit to guaranteeing their rights, and the governance of their territories and their effective participation in decision-making. It is essential to guarantee their direct access to financial resources so that they are the ones who define the management of their territories.
Latin America is called to be a place of innovation and rupture. We can, for example, promote new development models, such as sociobioeconomy, which promotes ventures that generate prosperous livelihoods.
COP16 is a moment to understand that natural resources and biodiversity are not renewable. Like the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Biodiversity Framework established goals for the year 2030. Therefore, let us go to COP16 with the strong conviction that the year 2030 is now, it is now.
Paula Caballero She is executive director of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Latin America.
