Forests and Finance Delegation Reflects on COP16

A small delegation from the Forests & Finance Coalition, including Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth, BankTrack and Amazon Watch, attended the UN COP16 biodiversity conference held in Cali, Colombia, 21^st October – 1^st November. We were there to advocate for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the stewardship of the world’s forests, and to challenge corporate power from shaping negotiations in their favor.

In anticipation of major attempts by big finance to water down and distract from real progress at COP16, the Forests and Finance Coalition published two major reports related to advancing the aspirations of the Global Biodiversity Framework. The annual Banking on Biodiversity Collapse report is the most comprehensive analysis of global finance’s role in furthering tropical forest collapse. The new Regulating Finance for Biodiversity report examines whether the current financial sector regulations are adequate to stop the tide of financing for financing tropical deforestation

Our team and other allies from across civil society worked together to push countries to implement their commitments to meet the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework. We called out the greenwashing efforts to distract attention from harmful resource exploitation and pushed for the establishment of new policies and laws to reign in the financial sector bankrolling biodiversity destruction.

It was a hectic, sleep-deprived two weeks – sometimes inspiring, sometimes frustrating, but never dull. Crucially, our efforts did make a difference. The conference ended with a mix of good and bad outcomes, with much work still to do in subsequent negotiations.

On the positive, some big picture outcomes from the negotiations included the:

• establishment of a new convention body dedicated to Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) and the acknowledgement of the role of Afro-descendent communities in the protection of biodiversity – both important developments to improve participation in the UN biodiversity process.
• operationalization of a new benefit-sharing mechanism and fund relating to the corporate use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources.
• adoption of rules to support the establishment of ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs).

On the flipside, too few countries submitted their national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) – only 44 out of 196 – and negotiations on how countries will finance the transition to living in harmony with nature broke down.

Developed countries have so far failed to stump up the money they previously committed to supporting the global biodiversity framework goals and were also unwilling to consider a new financial mechanism that would be more fair and accountable to all of the countries under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ultimately, the negotiations ended without reaching agreement on several key decisions.

Alongside our engagement and lobbying for rights-based biodiversity outcomes, Rainforest Action Network and partners engaged in a range of activities to sharpen our impact. These included:

• submitting an official complaint to the UN for its role in supporting the corporate-led greenwashing scheme the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
• disrupting the TNFD launch event, where we negotiated a powerful intervention by a Brazilian Indigenous Peoples’ leader whose lands have been destroyed by a TNFD corporate member
• presenting at multiple side events and press conferences across the official negotiating site Blue Zone and in the CSO-led Green Zone, resulting in media coverage in more than a dozen outlets, including the FT, Bloomberg and Mongabay
• meeting with the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to press the positions of civil society and our concerns of corporate influence in the negotiations.

While our movement should be proud of the impact we had in Cali, the scale of the challenge remains huge. We will continue to campaign for the rights of people, to protect nature, and to expose the corporate interests causing harm for profit. With the scale of the political and economic challenges we face world-wide, it’s all the more critical that our movement, our allies and our supporters continue to chart the course towards the future we want on a liveable planet.