Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The pharmaceutical industry and a host of other companies will have to voluntarily contribute to a new fund covering their use of genetic data, the COP16 UN biodiversity summit agreed, but countries have failed to reach a broader agreement on global finance for nature after prolonged negotiations and was suspended.
The two-week meeting in Cali, Colombia, of around 190 countries, alongside the UN climate summit, was expected to advance goals to halt nature’s decline by 2030, agreed there two years ago in Montreal during their last meeting.
But negotiators ended a final marathon plenary session that ran through Friday night and most of Saturday without a resolution on finances to support the nature protection goal.
A drop in the number of national delegates below the 130 required for a quorum, with those with flights to catch having left the summit, forced Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president, Susana Muhamad, to suspend the session . It has not yet been decided when or where it will resume.
“The meeting is not over – COP16 is not closed, because we have not considered all the agenda items or adopted the (closing) report,” said David Ainsworth, speaking on behalf of the secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, under which COP16 was held. “The parties must now find another date and venue to conclude it.”
He stressed, however, that the agenda items already adopted were officially operational after being “approved by the convention”, in which all UN member states participate, with the exception of the United States and the Holy See.
This included the measure to create a separate fund for payments to companies for using genetic data from nature, which has proven one of the most controversial issues. The disagreements came from countries like India and Switzerland.
Companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and agricultural technology currently benefit from free and widespread access to this data, which is typically collected by academic researchers and made available through open source databases funded by public funds.
The new multilateral mechanism would be financed by commercial users of so-called “digital sequential information”. The agreement responded to demands from biodiversity-rich developing countries that companies pay a share of their revenues from products developed using this data.
Companies in sectors that “benefit directly or indirectly” from the use of this data “are expected to contribute” to the new fund 0.1 percent of their turnover or 1 percent of their profit, “as indicative,” it was agreed.
Businesses that met two out of three criteria, $20 million in assets, $50 million in sales or $5 million in profits, were required to meet this requirement.
A contribution of 0.1 percent of revenue would have represented a $67 million payout last year from Switzerland alone Roche, the largest non-U.S. pharmaceutical company by sales.
Expert observers of the negotiations noted that the use of the word “should” rather than “shall” meant that these would be largely voluntary contributions from companies, rather than the mandatory levy that some countries were advocating.
They added, however, that the multinational agreement could create significant moral and reputational pressure on companies to comply.
The text also “invites” governments to take legislative or other measures to “encourage contributions” from businesses, thereby opening the door to possible mandatory requirements.
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations criticized the decision, saying it “fails to strike the right balance between the expected benefits of such a mechanism and the significant costs it could generate for society and science.” “. Chief executive David Reddy said the data was “essential for developing new drugs and vaccines”.
COP16 also agreed to create a new body focused on the rights and interests of indigenous peoples.
But there has been no agreement on governance systems around international biodiversity financing. In Montreal, nations agreed to increase total funding for nature protection and restoration to $200 billion a year by 2030, with rich countries providing $30 billion a year to support developing countries on the same date. To support this, countries agreed on a new fund under the Global Environment Facility, based in Washington.
At COP16, however, developing countries expressed concern that the GEF was too heavily influenced by rich countries and called for the creation of a new fund whose governance better reflects the priorities of all countries. nations.
Countries have also failed to reach consensus on monitoring and evaluation to hold nations accountable to their official commitments to nature protection and restoration.
“The suspension of the COP without any agreed financial strategy is alarming,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of the nonprofit Campaign for Nature. “The failure to make progress on financing in the face of unprecedented biodiversity loss keeps the world on a path toward nature loss and species extinction. »
Panama’s special representative for climate change, Juan Carlos Monterrey, said small developing countries felt they were facing unequal competition as the conference entered its final days.
“Small delegations from vulnerable countries are just there with a few negotiators – we have to stay awake for 36 hours, whereas (larger economies) have someone who has just showered in clean clothes at least twice a day” , he declared. “The process is not fair to begin with.”
Climate capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Check out the FT’s coverage here.
Are you curious about the FT’s commitments to environmental sustainability? Learn more about our science-based goals here
