Biodiversity finance impasse clouds COP17 closing talks

New Delhi: Finance has emerged as the main stumbling block at COP17, the UN biodiversity meeting in Yerevan, Armenia, with India, Brazil and China among others opposing a proposal to broaden the pool of countries paying to help developing countries halt degradation and restore biodiversity.

The European Union and other developed countries backed the call for "broadening the contributor base," but many developing countries argued it is an attempt to abdicate the historic responsibility of developed countries. The dispute comes as developed countries have fallen behind on their biodiversity finance commitments, according to a UN progress report on the 2030 targets set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Under the framework, developed countries agreed to ensure financial flows of $20 billion a year to developing countries by 2025, rising to $30 billion annually by 2030, to help them tackle biodiversity loss and protect nature.

With just a day to go before the official closing of COP17, the finance question has yet again become the flashpoint at the multilateral negotiations on environment. Options to end the impasse appear limited. A proposal prepared by Senegal environment minister Aliou Gori Diouf and Sweden's state secretary Daniel Westlen, following consultation by the Armenian COP17 Presidency, has failed to resolve the differences.


Diouf and Westlen were appointed co-facilitators of Wednesday's ministerial consultations, where representatives of 30 countries expressed their positions. This was followed by informal consultative bilateral meetings. The Senegal-Sweden proposal seeks to broaden the number of countries contributing to international biodiversity finance without changing existing legal obligations. It recognises that a relatively small group of countries are currently contributing to international biodiversity financing.

It also calls for faster implementation of the 2025-2030 resource mobilisation strategy and invites more countries to voluntarily assume the financial obligations of developed countries.