Reacción a "COP16 agrees to adopt first global plan to finance nature conservation"

Biodiversity conservation is an urgent necessity that calls for joint action by all governments and key global actors. The irretrievable loss of living beings is both a symptom and a cause of the planetary deterioration driven by the unchecked growth of the human species. The simplification of the biosphere, the trail of extinctions that we are leaving behind our apparent progress in synergies that are impossible to predict, is affecting the conditions in which life, including human life, develops. Hence the urgency of reaching agreements that define a global conservation framework that lays the foundations for effectively halting the loss of species. Just as there are already mechanisms in place to safeguard the climate, it is essential to start taking measures in the same direction for the effective protection of biodiversity. Not only should CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions be reduced, but the status of species should no longer be undermined and the populations and ranges of endangered organisms should be stabilised, if not increased.

This is the importance of the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP16) that closed last night in Rome with an agreement that timidly invites hope. According to the president of COP16, the Colombian Susana Muhamad, financial resources have been secured, how to manage them and how to monitor them have been defined. An almost idyllic framework. The difficulties lie in the extent to which governments and entities will take this agreement seriously, bearing in mind the new global socio-political context in which trends are undisguisedly pointing in the opposite direction. Decarbonisation entails considerable technological development with direct consequences on the economy that make it attractive to financial actors. Halting and reversing the extinction processes of flora and fauna is a much more complex problem, as its implementation may require particular considerations, species by species, and its financial effects, although they could be comparable to a certain extent with carbon markets, are not as popular at the moment.

The agreement reached in Rome, modest in scope and with consequences yet to be seen, at least establishes formal starting conditions for the take-off of an eventual recovery of biodiversity. That is no small thing. Let us hope that the goodwill shown by the small group of leaders present at the closing of the summit is not twisted by the weight of the interests of the great powers or by the reckless disdain that we humans tend to show for lives other than our own.