How to Fund Biodiversity and Fight ‘Biopiracy’
On the table at COP16 is a new system to tap a sliver of the trillions of dollars in revenue raked in by the world’s largest companies.
Participants applaud after the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a United Nations deal aimed at reversing biodiversity loss, at COP15 in Montreal in December 2022.
Photographer: Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
When negotiators from 196 countries gather at COP16 in Cali, Colombia in October, trying to find the money to plug an annual funding gap of $200 billion for biodiversity protection and restoration will be at the top of the agenda.
So far, proposals have ranged from rich country donations to impact funds or bonds deploying private capital, as well as a new international market for so-called biodiversity credits—tradable instruments representing a unit of protected or restored nature (akin to a carbon credit).