The COP16 biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia ended earlier this month with what many are describing as a letdown. With no agreement on how to finance or monitor progress toward the “30 x 30” commitment nailed down at COP15 in Montreal two years ago, it was a jarring follow-up to that historic victory for biodiversity. At that time, world leaders committed to conserving 30 per cent of terrestrial and marine habitats by 2030, adopted under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) within the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Despite widespread disappointment coming out of Cali, many are simultaneously heralding the summit’s landmark outcomes, from an expanded role within the CBD for Indigenous Peoples to agreement toward a global tax on products derived from genetic data sourced from nature, and a new fund (dubbed the “Cali Fund”) to support the fair-sharing of economic benefits derived from that data. The conference also secured a win for the global ocean, with countries agreeing to support Indigenous Peoples and communities working with scientists to identify and define ecologically and biologically significant areas in the high seas, an area outside of national jurisdictions and the CBD.

In a statement issued days after the conference’s end, Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s Minister of Environment, applauded the establishment of the permanent body for Indigenous Peoples. “This historic outcome would not have been possible without the leadership and collaboration of national Indigenous organizations on the ground in Cali,” he said. “It is, however, disappointing that we were unable to address critical issues, such as resource mobilization.”

Another meeting is already planned for next year in Bangkok, Thailand, to circle back to unfinished COP16 negotiations.

“We urge all parties to find a creative way to reconvene as quickly as possible to resolve unfinished business,” said Martin Harper, the chief executive officer of BirdLife International, the largest international partnership for nature conservation, in a statement. “The world is not moving at the pace and scale needed. Nature needs more than a compromise and a stalemate.”

Here’s a look at the major outcomes of COP16.

Who decides? Indigenous Peoples formally involved in UN process

In what is being hailed as a major advancement, Indigenous representation in official biodiversity decision-making has been formalized in the form of a permanent subsidiary body to the CBD. Not only does this mark a first for a UN environment body, but it upgrades what has been an informal working group for more than two decades and ensures Indigenous Peoples are at the table in future global decisions on nature conservation. The move also brings into decision-making local communities – those long connected to the lands and waterways where they live, but too long excluded from conservation decisions about those lands and waterways.

Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the UN and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, calls the new body “a critical step forward” and one that commits parties to the CBD “to embed the knowledge and role of Indigenous Peoples and local custodians across our work to deliver the Global Biodiversity Framework.”

Who benefits from nature’s DNA? Everyone

DNA sourced from animals, plants and microorganisms, known as digital sequence information (DSI), holds great potential for a range of products and services, from pharmaceuticals and vaccines to cosmetics to agriculture and biotechnology. But when it comes to who benefits from the economic potential of nature’s genetic data, UN member states at COP16 agreed that companies ought to be accountable for paying their fair share, especially back to the developing countries and Indigenous and local communities where this information is acquired.

In this ground-breaking deal, corporations benefiting commercially from DSI must pay a small percentage of their profits or revenues to a new fund, also created at COP16. The ‘Cali Fund’ will be managed by the UN, and fund conservation efforts, specifically in the countries where the genetic data is sourced. Academic, public research institutions and other entities using DSI, but not directly benefitting financially, will be exempt from paying into the fund.

What about “blue nature?” Keeping tabs on the High Seas Treaty

As the first biodiversity conference since countries adopted a complementary international agreement, the High Seas Treaty, advocates said it was the perfect opportunity to send a message to countries that the race to ratification must stay the course. So far, only 15 of the 60 countries needed to ratify that treaty are officially on board.

While Canada has not yet ratified the treaty, we are expected to do so and are one of the countries identified as “first movers,” hoping to fast-track the first wave of eight marine protected areas (MPAs) in the high seas as soon as the new treaty becomes law. A major philanthropic donation of $51.7 million for marine protected areas will also spur progress.

The simultaneous focus on 30×30 and the High Seas Treaty continues to put pressure on countries to work on high seas marine protected areas, said Susanna Fuller, vice-president of Oceans North. Given how long it takes to bring an MPA to fruition, it’s also pragmatic: “In Canada, we still take six to eight years at a minimum to get an MPA done.”

The COP16 agreement to establish ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs), with input from scientists working with Indigenous and local communities, will assist in protecting the ocean within and beyond areas of national jurisdiction. Establishing EBSAs is especially important as the global ocean – which comprises two-thirds of the planet – faces many current and rising threats, including overfishing and illegal fishing, habitat destruction, plastic and noise pollution, climate change and deep-sea mining. Protecting EBSAs, which are highly biodiverse and productive areas of the ocean, supports a healthy ocean, in turn supporting a healthy planet.

“We know less about the depths of the ocean than we do about the moon, so when we are making decisions about where we want to protect, or where we want to implement sustainable use measures like fisheries management, it is really important to identify which parts of the ocean are very vulnerable, and cannot take much exploitation,” explains Andreas Hansen, global ocean policy director at the Nature Conservancy.

Who pays and who monitors progress?

In order to meet the 30×30 goal, wealthy nations agreed at COP15 that they would finance biodiversity conservation in developing nations to the tune of $20 billion by 2025, ramping up to $30 billion by 2030.

However, it was not determined how developed nations would meet that commitment or where the money would go. Those details were supposed to be firmed up at COP16, but the meeting was suspended without an agreed-upon financing strategy.

“Failure to make progress on finance in the face of unprecedented biodiversity loss keeps the world on the path to nature loss and species extinction,” says Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature. In its study examining what a ‘fair share’ should be, Campaign for Nature found that Canada was significantly lagging behind in paying its proportion of the key agreement in the KM-GBF. Germany, Norway, France, and others are either meeting their fair share or nearly there, but by comparison, Canada paid just 31 per cent. In fact, 23 of 28 countries would have to double their biodiversity financing to meet their fair share, the charity reported.

In addition to a financial wall, the Cali talks ended with an impasse on monitoring progress toward the 23 targets and four goals of the KM-GBF. While countries committed to bringing National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans to COP16, to date only 44 of 196 countries have submitted (including Canada, with the release of its 2030 Nature Strategy and Nature Accountability Bill), while the majority of parties — 199 out of 196 countries — submitted national biodiversity targets without a plan for how to achieve those goals.

What’s next?

This year, the UN summits on Biodiversity, Climate and Land all take place in quick succession between October and December in Colombia, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia, respectively. These global events bring into focus interrelated crises: the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the land use crisis, and the financial crisis.

If the world treats these crises separately, then we won’t get to the root cause: “Treating the planet as if it were infinite,” says Nature Conservancy chief scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

“We assume there’s always more resources to go in and we don’t assign an economic value to those resources.”

Hopes have been high that failure at COP16 in Colombia won’t lead to more of the same in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia and at the next CBD in Armenia. But as the COP29 climate talks end without the level of financial commitment from developed countries needed to support curbing global missions, those hopes are dashed.

“Unless something shifts, when we meet again in Armenia in 2026 the scale of the challenge will only be bigger,” said BirdLife’s Martin Harper. “These outcomes are too little, but it’s not yet too late.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.