Cropped 23 October 2024: COP16 kicks off; Water woes; Coral bleaching ‘worst ever’

§ Key developments

COP16 kicks off in Cali

COLOMBIA CALLING: Representatives from 175 countries are meeting in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November for the COP16 biodiversity summit, with “life on Earth on the agenda”, the New York Times reported. At the talks, countries will grapple with how to put the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – often described as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – into action, alongside debates on finance for developing countries and how to best share the benefits from genetic information, the newspaper said. Carbon Brief has produced an interactive grid of where each party stands on the key negotiating issues and a live tracker of the texts under negotiation. On Tuesday, Carbon Brief’s team of five journalists on the ground in Cali held an online webinar on the key issues up for discussion at the summit. A recording is available.

HIGH-LEVEL PRESENCE: Mongabay reported that around 23,000 delegates are attending COP16, with presidents or heads of state from Brazil, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Mozambique, Peru and Suriname expected to be present. (The Earth Negotiations Bulletin noted that the summit “is the largest UN biodiversity conference to date”.) The outlet added that the conference also aims to adopt a work programme for Indigenous peoples and local communities. El Espectador reported that the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) will invest $300m in the protection of important ecosystems across the region, including the Amazon, the Antarctic and Patagonia. The president of CAF, Sergio Díaz-Granados, said they will deliver a tool for identifying high-quality projects to be funded.

PLANS AND PLEDGES: A joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that 85% of countries had failed to meet a UN request to publish new pledges on how they plan to tackle biodiversity decline before COP16. Just 25 nations and the EU released new national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) ahead of the summit. Since then, a further 10 countries have come forward with NBSAPS, including COP16 host Colombia.  Colombia’s NBSAP pledges to extend protected areas from 24 to 34% of national territory and increase the bioeconomy’s contribution to national GDP from 0.8 to 3%. Carbon Brief will be updating its NBSAP tracker later this week.  

Water woes

STRESSED OUT: New analysis from the US-based thinktank the World Resources Institute found that “one-quarter of the world’s crops are grown in areas where the water supply is highly stressed, highly unreliable or both”. Three staple crops that together provide more than half of the world’s calories – rice, wheat and corn – are “particularly vulnerable”, according to the analysis. It added that both rainfed and irrigated crops “face growing threats”, with the former imperilled by “erratic weather patterns” and the latter facing “increasing competition over shared water supplies”. According to the report, “demand for water to irrigate crops is projected to rise by 16% by 2050, compared to 2019”.

TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: Covering the report, Grist wrote that water stress “stems partly from a common tendency to take water for granted and treat it like an endlessly renewable, on-demand resource”. Sam Kuzma, one of the authors of the report, told the publication: “Because we don’t put a value on water, you can irrigate and not pay much at all for the water that you’re using…That means we can be pretty reckless with how we’re growing and in what environments.” The analysis “spells trouble for global food security”, Grist wrote, noting that major agricultural exporters, including India, are among the countries most at risk of increasing water stress. 

ROME DECLARATION: At the World Food Forum last week, hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, member states adopted the Rome Declaration on Water Scarcity in Agriculture. According to Down to Earth, “the countries committed to mobilise greater political support in terms of policies, legal and institutional frameworks, access to financing and responsible water governance”. FAO director general Dr Qu Dongyu told the plenary session: “The solutions we develop must reflect the interconnected nature of water security, agrifood systems and climate resilience.” According to the FAO press release, “by 2050, more than half the global population will live in areas at risk of water scarcity at least one month a year”.

§ Spotlight

‘The planet doesn’t have time to lose’  

Carbon Brief’s entire food, land and nature team is on the ground in Cali, Colombia to report on the UN biodiversity talks. In this spotlight, Carbon Brief outlines what has happened so far at COP16.

Hola from Cali, where the UN biodiversity summit COP16 has kicked off this week.  

Thousands of negotiators, observers, activists and journalists have descended on the city – the country’s “salsa capital” – for detailed nature discussions over the coming two weeks. 

Far from the harsh lighting and long corridors of other COPs, Cali delegates are treated to mountain views in the distance and large overhead fans staving off the October heat in one of the world’s most biodiverse countries. 

It has not all been smooth sailing so far, however, with packed buses transporting sweating delegates, congested roads, poor internet connections and winding security queues on the first day of the summit. 

COP16 comes two years after countries signed off on a global biodiversity deal aiming to halt and reverse nature loss by the end of this decade. 

Since this agreement, countries have been figuring out how to put in place these goals on a national level. 

Hot topics

Negotiators are discussing a wide range of issues, including the implementation of biodiversity goals and how to scale up nature finance. 

Bernadette Fischler Hooper, the head of global advocacy at WWF, told a press briefing on 21 October that resource mobilisation was hotly debated at the pre-COP16 implementation talks last week. 

For example, countries are split on whether to develop a new global fund for biodiversity – to be controlled by the COP – or stick with the current fund. Negotiators are trying to break the “deadlock” on this issue over the next two weeks, she noted. 

Other discussions centre around agreeing rules around digital access to genetic information, Indigenous peoples’ rights and monitoring for the Global Biodiversity Framework. 

“The planet doesn’t have time to lose,” Colombian environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad said at the summit’s opening ceremony.  

Speaking via telecast, UN chief António Guterres also urged countries to “make peace with nature” – referencing the COP16 theme. 

Security fears 

More than 10,000 police officers are in place across the city amid threats from a rebel group to disrupt COP16. 

Speaking at a press conference on 21 October, Cali’s mayor, Alejandro Eder, said that security was the first issue tackled when the city was selected to host COP16. 

Eder assured the safety of COP16 attendees, but Colombian president Gustavo Petro last week said he was “nervous” that “something bad” could happen at the start of the summit, according to Colombia’s El Heraldo newspaper. 

Eder noted that COP16 was organised in “record time”, given that cities usually have two years to prepare. (Turkey withdrew as COP16 host last year after severe earthquakes killed more than 40,000 people. Cali was confirmed as the new host in February 2024.)

Elsewhere, nearly 2,000 Indigenous peoples from Colombia took to the streets of Cali on 21 October calling for nature to be respected. More protests are expected throughout the summit. 

Carbon Brief’s team of five nature journalists will be closely tracking the negotiations on the ground in Cali over the next two weeks. 

§ News and views

REEF IT AND WEEP: The mass bleaching of coral reefs worldwide since early 2023 “is now the most extensive on record”, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters. Satellite data showed a “staggering 77%” of global reefs so far have “been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress…as climate change fuels record and near-record ocean temperatures across the world”, the newswire added. “We’ve eclipsed the previous record by 11.3% and…in half the amount of time,” Dr Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, told Axios. CNN said that scientists have called for an emergency session on coral reefs at COP16 “in response to the bleaching record”.

‘NATURE-POSITIVE’: A record number of companies are expected to be at COP16, and they are “increasingly touting their ambitions to be ‘nature-positive’ alongside their net zero targets”, the Financial Times wrote. According to the newspaper, which looked at the rapid proliferation of the term “nature-positive” since COP15 in 2022, it implies “halting and reversing biodiversity loss, targeting an overall increase in nature…by 2030, relative to a 2020 baseline”. However, it adds that scientists and environmentalists are worried that states and firms “are starting to brandish the term as a buzzword” before a comprehensive and credible definition of nature-positive and its metrics exists.

GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM ATLAS: At COP16, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) launched the proof-of-concept of the Global Ecosystems Atlas, a tool for mapping and monitoring the world’s ecosystems. According to a GEO press release, the atlas provides information on ecosystem extent, condition and potential risks, drawing on inputs from high-quality maps and new maps based on field data and AI. The atlas aims to support “tracking [progress on] the Global Biodiversity Framework, develop national ecosystem maps…and inform private sector reporting on nature-related risks”, the press release added.

THE ROOF IS ON FIRE: Forest fires have intensified and become more widespread “amid global heating, particularly in the high northern latitudes such as Canada and Siberia”, researchers wrote in the Conversation. Their new study found that global carbon emissions from forest fires have grown by 60% over the past two decades, with the “largest contributions com[ing] from fires in Siberia and western North America”, the authors added. “We had to check the calculations because it’s such a big number,” lead author Dr Matthew Jones told the New York Times. Elsewhere, research covered by Carbon Brief revealed that a long-term decline in area burned globally by wildfires due to land-use change has almost entirely been offset by increases caused by warming.

DYING PLANET: Wildlife populations worldwide have “plunged” by an average of 73% in the last 50 years according to the latest Living Planet report, the Guardian reported. However, it adds that the Living Planet index is “weighted in favour of data from Africa and Latin America​​” and the metric has faced criticism for “potentially overestimating wildlife declines”. Vox, covering the report, wrote that it “underscores [that] we are living in a time of profound biodiversity loss” and that “calculating a single figure to encompass all of this loss isn’t easy”. At the same time, scientists not involved in the report called its metrics “misleading”, the story added. A ZSL scientist quoted by Vox said that “it’s also possible that the [Living Planet Index] actually underestimates the scale of declines”. Our World In Data published a guide to understanding the index and “what it does and doesn’t mean”.

§ Watch, read, listen

FOREST LOSS: Mongabay looked at how Indonesia’s plan to boost renewable energy could lead to Indigenous communities losing “huge swathes of their forests to biomass plantations”. 

EYES ON SOUTH AMERICA: Analysis in the Guardian discussed how Colombia and Brazil “have the chance of a lifetime to save the Amazon” in hosting key upcoming global events. 

SNAIL’S PACE: Ahead of COP16, NPR’s All Things Considered radio show spoke to wildlife biologist Dr David Sischo about what it’s like to work with Hawaii’s endangered tree snails.

COUNTING MOTHS: Sundance award-winning documentary “Nocturnes” followed ecologist Dr Mansi Mungee counting hawk moths in the lush forests of north-eastern India.

§ New science

• A new study found that nearly half of the proposed indicators for measuring progress on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework could involve community-based monitoring programmes. Researchers in Nature Sustainability wrote that greater involvement of citizens could “enhance local to national decision-making”. 
• A 1% increase in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was linked with a 6.3% rise in malaria cases the following month, a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found. Using sub-annual data, researchers showed that deforestation increases malaria transmission, especially in areas with high amounts of forest cover.
• Increasingly dry conditions under a changing climate will pose a significant threat to frogs and other water-sensitive animals, according to new research in Nature Climate Change. Researchers combined maps of drought risk and frog and toad habitats to find that nearly 7% of frog and toad habitats will become “arid-like” by the end of the century.

§ In the diary

• 21 October-1 November: COP16 UN biodiversity conference | Cali, Colombia 
• 25 October: Kiribati presidential election
• 4-5 November: UN Water meeting | New York
• 5 November: US election
• 11-22 November: COP29 UNFCCC climate conference | Baku, Azerbaijan

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to [email protected].