COP16: Three key outcomes for the ocean

The COP16 UN Biodiversity Summit recently took place in Cali, Columbia. Elise Lavender, Parliamentary Affairs Officer, outlines three key takeaways from the conference that will affect our seas and our natural world.

Empowering voices: Greater visibility for Small Island Developing States and a permanent body for indigenous peoples

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have historically faced unique challenges due to climate change and ocean degradation. This is largely due to geographical features such as high percentages of low-lying coastal land, which creates greater vulnerability to storms and rising sea levels. COP16 saw SIDS such as the Azores and the Maldives making waves and using this international platform to show others how it's done.

The Azores declared the largest Marine Protected Area in the North Atlantic, covering nearly 300,000km2 – an area larger than the UK!?The Maldives also announced that it has reached protection status for 14% of the country’s coral reefs – with more areas planned to be protected by 2030.

And this wasn’t the only positive for Global Majority voices.

COP16 saw the landmark decision to establish a new permanent body that will help elevate issues related to indigenous peoples and local communities. This body will work to ensure that indigenous peoples and local communities have meaningful contributions towards the objectives of the Convention:

• The conservation of biological diversity
• The sustainable use of biological diversity components
• The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources

It’s essential that those most affected by climate change should have a voice in decisions which impact them, and this signals a positive step in ensuring this is achieved.

Charting a sustainable future: The historic decision to adopt EBSAs (Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas)

For over eight years, work on Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) was hindered by legal and political concerns, but COP16 saw parties finally agreeing on fresh processes for identifying new EBSAs and updating existing ones.

EBSAs cover many different types of marine ecosystems that hold particular importance in terms of ecological and biological characteristics. This includes the provision of vital habitats, food sources or being home to a particular species.

This decision could play a key role in implementing the global target of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030, particularly as this agreement contains measures for identifying EBSA areas on the High Seas. The High Seas makes up two-thirds of the world’s ocean, and this agreement will be crucial to achieving key Global Biodiversity Framework targets.

However, a label alone isn’t enough. Back in 2021,?our ‘Marine Unprotected Areas’ report found that bottom trawling was taking place in 98% of the UK’s offshore Marine Protected Areas designed to protect vital seabed habitats. To ensure that EBSAs are effective and contribute to biodiversity targets, they must be governed properly. This will require proper funding, monitoring and dedicated capacity to ensure that these areas are properly managed.

A potentially ground-breaking digital sequence deal

Digital Sequence Information (DSI) is genetic information that’s been sequenced from the natural world, creating data that’s freely available digitally. This research can then be shared and applied to medicine, agriculture and conservation.

Making this information more readily available enables us to better understand the challenges that certain species face and intervene, with?UK Nature Minister Mary Creagh explaining that it can assist with “identifying infectious diseases and predicting which plants will survive in a warming climate”.

The deal sees the launch of the new 'Cali fund', which businesses can contribute to if they use this genetic information - however, this is currently only optional. The Cali fund will further support DSI, with a significant proportion flowing to Indigenous People and local communities.

The UK's attendance at COP16

We were pleased to see a strong UK Government presence at COP16, with attendees including the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA Ministers and a cross-party cohort of UK parliamentarians.

With COP29 on the horizon, there’s a huge opportunity for the UK Government to work with countries, businesses and environmental groups to push forward ambitious agreements that will tackle the nature and climate crises in tandem.

What next?

While these outcomes are positive and a big step in the right direction, it’s important to acknowledge that COP16 did not close growing gaps on the issue of nature financing.

Although eight countries pledged around $400 million total to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, this falls significantly short of the call to mobilise $200 billion per year by 2030.

Proper finance for nature is vital to address nature loss and habitat restoration. Countries, and companies, need to scale-up finance for nature restoration considerably. The longer we delay, the worse the damage to our natural world.

Despite being a key priority prior to the Conference, COP16 concluded without reaching an agreement on a framework for monitoring biodiversity target progress. Effective monitoring keeps states accountable and enables us to understand if new measures are actively benefiting the environment and biodiversity. Without proper funding and monitoring for these frameworks, progress to restore our natural world will be slow.

Countries, including the UK, urgently need to match their warm words with robust action.