COP16: UN Biodiversity Conference resumes work in Rome

The UN Biodiversity Conference, also known as COP16, is set to resume its work in Rome Tuesday.

The conference achieved some significant progress when it last met in Cali, Colombia, in November 2024, but the talks ran out of time.

Georgina Chandler, head of policy and campaigns for the Zoological Society London, said: "Discussions ran out of time (in Colombia), specifically on the finance agenda item, because that was particularly contentious. And after long debates, governments had to head home. We lost quorum, so that meant that there weren't enough people left physically in the room to reach an agreement."

The talks in Rome notably aim to approve a financial strategy of securing $200 billion annually by 2030.

These funds, if obtained, would go towards initiatives for the protection and conservation of biodiversity around the world.

According to the UN, 11 countries and the Government of Quebec have so far pledged a total sum of $400 million.

Another goal of the second part of the conference is the redirection of subsidies that are currently contributing to harming the environment.

Achieving these goals is becoming ever more crucial in the face of the current state of biodiversity around the world.

"Biodiversity is really about life on Earth. It is the support system for everything, for the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water. It really relies on intact ecosystems, ecosystems. It's not just a matter of trees. It's the microbes in the soil. It's the wildlife that sustains the patterns of reproduction and pollination and everything that's going on in all different sorts of ecosystems," said Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy for The Nature Conservancy.

"And so we can't survive without biodiversity," she added.

Global wildlife populations have plunged on average by 73% in 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London biennial Living Planet report in October last year.