COP16: Optimism and connection behind the headlines

What is COP16?

In late October 2024, the UN Convention on Biodiversity held its biennial large meeting (the Conference of Parties, or COP). This convention is a sister of the better known one on climate change, both birthed in Rio in 1992, but until the last few years has languished in relative obscurity.

This all changed two years ago in Montreal, which produced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious international agreement which aims to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, combining protection, restoration, finance and systems transformation.

This rise in prominence reflects the rising profile of the ongoing global decline in biodiversity and the need to reverse it as an existential challenge on a par with climate change.

It is easy to be sceptical about these international meetings and coverage of COP16 has focussed on the slow progress on negotiations and key issues being left unresolved. But what is gradually emerging and solidifying from UN Convention on Biodiversity COPs is a global framework for governance of biodiversity.

COP16 is more than the headlines

While the negotiations are essential there are other aspects of the conference that I think get less international attention or understanding by non-participants. COP16 is essentially a conference on biodiversity that brings together governments, policymakers, NGOs, academics, journalists, indigenous peoples, activists, businesses and finance in a somewhat overwhelming flurry of events that stretch from the Blue Zone right across the city.

These are amorphous and hard to track. But this is where a lot of the detailed consequences of the Global Biodiversity Framework, and wider thinking about the biodiversity challenge, are being worked out.

For example, I attended a session on how researchers are developing a global biodiversity data architecture that will support how countries can track and report changes in their biodiversity and another on how ecosystem restoration activities can be scaled up to meet 30 by 30 targets.

Even more amorphous, sprinkled in every day, were multiple conversations and serendipitous encounters, new agreements to collaborate together on something, new plans being hatched. As an academic I know of no other forum where I can engage so effortlessly with governments, activists, NGOs, journalists and filmmakers.

To the outside this “conference of biodiversity” may seem superfluous to the main negotiations, especially in an age where air travel is rightly being questioned and many have taken the decision to not travel. But I can’t see the speed of activity and collaboration required to address the biodiversity challenge happening in any other way, especially when creating partnerships across countries.

Cali delivers the People’s COP

This year the meeting was held in the city of Cali in Colombia, tucked in the forest-clad eastern foothills of the Western Cordillera of the Andes, fittingly one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Lush tropical montane forest stretches above the city, a tree-lined river runs through like a throbbing green vein. This stunning, friendly city has a troubled history and it was gamble for the Colombian government to locate it here, a gamble which I believe paid off admirably.

The event was an opportunity for mobilization of public awareness, activism and enthusiasm. In past few years “nature” has been a more prominent part of public conversation, but there is so much more to be done. The Colombian government made this explicit in declaring this “the people’s COP”, and they truly delivered.

The Green Zone, in the heart of the city, on the pedestrianized streets straddling the Cali river, teemed with the public, enjoying the event but also learning and celebrating biodiversity and the natural world. As an ecologist it was truly wondrous to see such a public and joyous celebration of nature and its importance.

COP16 also matters for local ecologists in the host country and host region. A role I’ve carried on from my time as President of the BES is to lead on the society’s global equity work. Countries in the tropics hold some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world (Colombia itself is the second most biodiverse country on Earth, after much larger Brazil).

At the same time, the ecologists in these countries, who have the potential to be powerful voices for the understanding and protection of these environments, have deeply unequal access resources and opportunities to progress their science.

It is essential that voices of local tropical ecologists are heard more loudly, be this through directly supporting their research or in developing inclusive international collaboration, or involvement in international gatherings like COP16. Doing this brings benefit to all, helping build scientific careers and the capacity for local voices to influence science and conservation nationally and internationally, and in developing a stronger and genuinely global science of ecology.

Biodiversity, both local and global

Biodiversity and nature recovery are ultimately always local and intimate, but they cannot only be local. Somehow we need to bridge the scales from local to national to global and try to shift the values of our modern civilizations to rebuild our connections with nature, building new stories about how the natural world is not primarily a commodity, but the nurturing matrix from which we emerge and which sustains us.

COP16 had the strap-line of “paz con la naturaleza”, peace with nature. The President of the COP, the inspiring Colombian Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad, spoke of the need to live in synchrony with the cycles of nature. The UN secretary general spoke of ending a war with nature.

After spending ten days in the company of people, both delegates and locals, with so much love for the natural world, I come home energised and empowered. This felt significant. There is so so much to do, but I feel this was an important moment in addressing the huge challenge of creating civilisational and just peace with nature.