Big Guns Descend On Cali For Final Push In UN Biodiversity Talks

Big guns descend on Cali for final push in UN biodiversity talks

Cali, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Oct, 2024) Heads of state, ministers and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrive in Cali Tuesday hoping to add impetus to grinding talks on ways to save nature from human destruction.

The 16th so-called Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has the urgent task of coming up with monitoring and funding mechanisms to achieve 23 nature protection goals agreed in Canada two years ago.

Themed "Peace with Nature," the summit has been bogged down in disagreement about modalities of funding, as well as sharing the profits of digitally sequenced plant and animal genetic data -- used in medicines and cosmetics -- with the communities they come from.

Delegates have no time to waste.

There are only five years left to achieve the 23 UN targets, which include placing 30 percent of land, water and ocean under protection by 2030.

A report issued by nature watchdogs said Monday that only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters, and 8.4 percent of the ocean and coastal areas, are within documented protected and conserved areas.

"This leaves a land area roughly the size of Brazil and Australia combined, and at sea an area larger than the Indian Ocean, to be designated by 2030 in order to meet the global target," said the Protected Planet Report.

Also on Monday, an update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened animals and plants found more than one in three species of tree are at risk of extinction worldwide.

These include many that provide humans with timber, medicine, food and fuel.

More than 46,000 plant and animal species out of more than 166,000 assessed for the Red List were found to be threatened with extinction.