A guide to COP21 in Colombia

The U.N. Conference on Biological Diversity, known as COP16, has just started in Cali, Colombia, bringing together delegates from across the world. During the next few weeks, ideas that are usually the domain of biodiversity negotiators will be discussed.

Here’s what you need to know to follow an event in which national action, genetic resources, ancestral knowledge and money will be key issues to stop the planet’s dramatic loss of species and ecosystems.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

The Convention on Biological Diversity was started in 1992 with three objectives: to conserve biodiversity, to use it sustainably and to share its benefits in a just manner. Every two years, the countries that ratified the convention — only the U.S. and the Vatican have not — meet to negotiate how to achieve these objectives. The event is known as the Conference of the Parties or by the acronym COP.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Addressing biodiversity loss requires targets, and that is what the convention has sought to focus on. In 2010, 20 targets, known as the Aichi targets, were created with a view to being met by 2020. But the result was far from a success: the convention itself recognized that none of the targets were achieved, and only six saw partial progress in their direction. Following this bleak scenario, a new plan was drawn up at COP15 in 2022 — the first to be held after the pandemic: the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This framework has four goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030 which include protecting 30% of the planet’s ecosystems and raising $200 billion a year for biodiversity.

National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs)

The acronym NBSAPs stands for National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, and refers to the national plans that each country must submit to the U.N. describing how they intend to meet the Biodiversity Framework targets. COP16 in Cali was to be the place for countries to present their plans for the first time. But to date, more than half of those signed up have not done so.

Nagoya Protocol

The Nagoya Protocol, a sort of “child” of the CBD, was signed in 2010 with the aim of meeting the convention’s third objective, that of equitably sharing the benefits of biodiversity. This protocol stipulates that when a pharmaceutical company, or any other company or country, collects a species in a biodiverse nation to explore its genetic material and develop a product, it alone will not obtain benefits. Nagoya establishes that the profit, whether monetary or not, must be shared with the country from which the species comes and with the local or ancestral community that protects it.

DSI or digital information of genetic resources

The Nagoya Protocol, however, did not take the digital era into account. Today, there are open databases with “digital sequence information” on the genetic resources of many species in all countries. This “digital sequence information” — or DSI — allows a pharmaceutical company, or any other type of company, to use this information to develop a product without even traveling to the country the DSI comes from. During COP16, a lot will be said about DSI because one of the key aims of the conference will be to determine how a fund might be set up to share the benefits of products resulting from the use of these genetic sequences.

Cartagena Protocol

The Cartagena Protocol is another “child” of the convention. It was established in 2000 and seeks to guarantee the safety of living organisms. In other words, that species that have been genetically modified or modified by biotechnology processes do not pose any risk to human health or the environment.

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