Time for Urgent Action on Biodiversity in Colombia
17 October 2024This piece comes to us from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of THIRTEEN Productions LLC/The WNET Group.

©Jonathan Vanegas
This month, the world’s governments, intergovernmental and international organizations, the conservation community, Indigenous Peoples organizations, business and industry representatives, and others will convene in Cali, Colombia for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The conference arrives as we confront three global existential crises caused by human actions—biodiversity collapse, climate change, and global health and pandemics. No one country can solve this problem alone—and multilateralism can drive action in ways that individual national-level actions cannot.
In Cali, governments will report on their strategies to achieve goals adopted two years ago in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The GBF’s 23 ambitious targets include a commitment to protect and conserve at least 30 percent of all land, freshwater, and marine areas by 2030 (“30×30”); the prioritization of ecosystems with high ecological integrity; ending unsustainable and illegal use of wildlife; and a reduction in the risk of pathogen spillover, among others.
It’s been a long time coming. In 1992, the world gathered in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as “the Rio Summit.” That meeting resulted in two important legally binding agreements: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In Rio, negotiations also began for a UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), finalized two years later.
The Rio conventions established a new global multilateral system to address biodiversity loss and climate change via a series of Conferences of the Parties to the convention, or CoPs. Since 1992, there have been 15 CBD and UNCCD CoPs, and 28 UNFCCC CoPs. These conventions complement earlier wildlife-focused treaties focused on threatened, endangered and migratory species.

Bull Shark Beqa Lagoon. Emily Darling ©WCS
There is no doubt that many governments are working hard to implement all of these conventions. Yet nature continues to disappear at an alarming rate while commercial over-exploitation of nature (including wild species) proceeds virtually unabated. Human-induced climate change has spiraled out of control and Indigenous Peoples and local communities have been further marginalized, all as we recover from a global pandemic with zoonotic origins.
But as a conservationist by profession and passion, I must always find hope amidst the gloom. If all of the GBF’s 23 targets are actually implemented by governments, by the 2030 deadline, nature will indeed be in better shape than it is today.
And that’s where the Cali meeting comes in. Key to nature’s protection is the concept of ecological integrity—the healthy function, structure, and composition of ecosystems. Its greatest challenge is humanity’s fractured relationship with nature. The rampant over-exploitation of wildlife and natural resources—on land and in the sea, both legal and illegal—undermines efforts to protect and restore ecological integrity.
Although it seems bleak, vast areas on our planet remain that evince high ecological integrity—functioning as they should and helping to mitigate climate change; they must be conserved.
International flows of money provide a complement to the ambitious global commitments on biodiversity loss and climate change. Some countries may make their participation in 30×30 and other targets of the GBF conditional on finance. They are of course correct that it is the Global North that has to date pillaged and consumed the wildlife and natural resources of their own countries, and the Global South.
While several developing countries are taking meaningful steps of course to address that imbalance, many countries in the Global South that are vital for global biodiversity conservation or mitigation of climate change are currently underserved by financial mechanisms and donors—a dynamic that looms large in Cali.
That plays directly into the Government of Colombia’s theme for the meeting in Cali: Peace with Nature. We must make peace amongst the peoples of our planet, but we also must make peace with our uses and misuses of wildlife, forests, grasslands, coral reefs, and the open ocean. We must learn from the Indigenous Peoples who have successfully stewarded their lands and waters for millennia.
We can live in harmony with nature—but we must do more than talk about it at meetings every two years. Governments, businesses—all of us—need to take urgent action to change our food systems, our consumption patterns, our energy and transport systems, and our very ways of living to put them on a sustainable footing.
The destruction of nature fueling the biodiversity, climate, and health crises threatens life on Earth as we know it. I’ve been to more than 20 CoPs in my career as a conservationist, and I’m not naïve regarding the challenges we face to end the war on nature and safeguard our precious planet. When I get off the plane in beautiful, verdant Cali, I will think about my two young granddaughters and what sort of planet they will inherit. I remain hopeful that my government and other colleagues will be doing the same.
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