After facing discredit, a Brazilian proposal to create a new global fund for biodiversity received support from 63 countries this Tuesday (29), the last day of the intersectional meeting of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, which is preparing an agreement with the objective of increasing the protection of the planet’s biodiverse areas by 2050.
The support was announced as a joint positioning of developing countries, bringing together the African group (negotiating bloc with 54 countries), Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Venezuela.
The group called on the developed-country bloc to provide “at least $100 billion a year initially, rising to $700 billion annually by 2030.”
The figure of US$ 100 billion per year was inspired by the amount promised in 2009 by developed countries to combat climate change, but which has not yet been fulfilled.
The mention of a similar value is read as a provocation to the failed promise of rich countries, but the group’s argument is the search for equity between the climate and biodiversity agendas.
The amount calculated by experts to fund national biodiversity targets is at least US$200 billion annually. When all the efforts negotiated in the future biodiversity agreement are added together, the cost approaches R$ 1 trillion.
The idea of ​​creating a new fund to receive resources for biodiversity had been presented by Brazil at the beginning of the meeting in Geneva (which began on the 13th) but was initially viewed with suspicion, interpreted as an attempt to delay the negotiation process and even trying to end the current funding mechanism.
Currently, biodiversity actions are financed by the GEF (Global Enviroment Facility), created in 1992, together with the Biodiversity Convention.
The joint position released this Tuesday states that the new fund should not replace the GEF, but complement it, ensuring that resources for biodiversity are new and avoiding double accounting by donors – who could report donations for forest conservation actions. within both conventions, both climate and biodiversity.
Donors, on the other hand, also fear double counting by executors and say they don’t want to “pay twice for the same tree”.
Negotiators from different blocs told the sheetat the beginning of the meeting in Geneva, that Brazil’s proposal would take a few years to be implemented and would not solve the main problem: the lack of money.
However, the perception changed in the last week and the creation of a new fund came to be seen by developing countries as a way to increase the pressure for new resources. For a new account, with a zero balance, the need to increase funding could not be refuted.
According to negotiators from the developing countries bloc, developed countries would have tried to remove the commitment to increase resources from the draft of the agreement, which aroused the reaction of the African group, one of the articulators of the joint position.
The joint position was taken to the plenary of the meeting by Gabon, on behalf of the group of developing countries “with similar positions on biodiversity and development”, signaling a new bloc alignment in the negotiation.
The Biodiversity Convention even had a negotiating bloc on behalf of megadiverse countries, but it remained inactive due to a lack of agreement on the positions of the members.
After 17 days of negotiations in Geneva, countries are still far from a common understanding of conservation and funding goals.
The Convention has scheduled a new session for June in Nairobi, Kenya, when it hopes to have cleaner drafts ready to be taken to COP15 on Biodiversity in China. The conference, where the biodiversity agreement is expected to be signed, has been postponed due to the pandemic and still does not have a confirmed date.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of Avaaz.
