Raising funds for biodiversity protection

At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome/Italy from the 25th–27th February 2025 Governments agreed on the strategy to raise the funds needed to protect biodiversity and achieve the action targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), bringing the business of the UN Biodiversity Conference, COP16, which had been suspended in Cali, Colombia, in 2024, to a close.

After intense negotiations, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed on a way forward in terms of resource mobilisation, with a view to close the global biodiversity finance gap and achieve the target of mobilising at least 200 billion US dollars a year by 2030, including 20 billion USD a year in international flows by 2025, rising to 30 billion USD by 2030.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) adopted a Strategy for Resource Mobilisation that identifies a broad range of instruments, mechanisms and institutions that could be tapped to mobilise the funds needed for implementation of the ambitious Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This includes public finance from national and subnational governments, private and philanthropic resources, multilateral development banks, blended finance and other novel approaches.

The Cali Fund

In the margins of the resumed COP16 session, the Cali Fund for the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from the use of Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources (DSI) – the Cali Fund - were launched which will receive contributions from private sector entities making commercial use of DSI. 

By leveraging funding from the private sector, the Fund ushers in a new era for biodiversity finance. Companies making commercial use of data from genetic resources in nature in a range of lucrative industries are now expected to contribute either a portion of their revenue or their profits to the Fund. 

Contributions to the Cali Fund will be allocated to the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, including by supporting the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). At least 50 per cent of the Cali Fund resources will be allocated to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, recognising their role as custodians of biodiversity.

Responsibility and transparency

Parties further enhanced the monitoring framework for the KMGBF, agreed upon at COP15. The monitoring framework is essential to the implementation of the Framework because it provides the common yardsticks that Parties will use to measure progress against the KMBGF’s 23 targets and four goals. 

At COP16, Parties agreed on the way that the indicators would be measured and used. This will ensure that all Parties are tracking progress in a way which can be interpreted by national policy makers, and that it will provide data which can be aggregated up to the global level to provide a global picture of implementation for the KMGBF. 

Parties also took important decisions on how progress in the implementation of the KMGBF will be reviewed at COP17 as part of the planned global stocktaking. Together the decisions taken by the COP16 will enhance responsibility and transparency in the implementation and monitoring of the KMGBF.

(CBD/ile)

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