As COP16 Biodiversity negotiations resume, civil society organizations urge countries to transition away from fossil fuels

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Rome, Italy (February 20, 2025) – Countries will reconvene in Rome next week to resume discussions from the 16th session of the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP16), which includes the financial resources mobilization, as well as monitoring and planning for the fulfillment of the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

As talks continue from February 25 to 27 after being suspended without an agreement in November, Stand.earth joins other civil society organizations in urging member states to:

1. Transition away from fossil fuels – Countries must stop new fossil fuel extraction projects, prioritizing the conservation of high-biodiversity regions such as the Amazonia and marine ecosystems in the Caribbean, in addition to protecting the rights of affected communities and developing economic alternatives based on local and sustainable solutions.
2. Promote accessible and adequate financing – The Global Biodiversity Framework estimates the biodiversity financing gap to be at least $700 billion annually by 2030. To close it, countries must redirect resources from fossil subsidies to conservation and just energy transition initiatives. It is also critical to ensure direct access to finance for Indigenous Peoples, who have historically protected biodiversity the most. In this regard, civil society organizations urge the financial sector to adopt commitments not to invest in extractive sectors in high-biodiversity areas.
3. Develop robust monitoring and reporting, integrating climate and biodiversity – For the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans must recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities as key partners in the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity. To this end, it is essential to ensure recognition of their territories as a special category of conservation, with respect for their rights and governance systems. It is also essential to incorporate their knowledge systems as effective tools for conservation, and to ensure that their contribution is reflected in national and global biodiversity reports, promoting their active participation in monitoring processes, following the guidelines of environmental justice and the Escazú Agreement.

Experts from civil society organizations offer the following statements:

Gisela Hurtado, Senior Amazonia Campaigner at Stand.earth:

“We cannot save biodiversity while continuing to deepen the climate crisis with continued investments in fossil fuels. The main culprits must acknowledge their historical debt: in the second part of COP16 in Rome and on the road to COP30 in Belém, wealthy countries must commit to pay, and some of these resources must go directly to Indigenous Peoples as the protectors of vital ecosystems like the Amazon. It is time to move beyond promises and take action toward climate justice.”

Juan Bay, President of NAWE (Waorani Nationality of Ecuador):

“Direct financing for Indigenous Peoples, as ancestral stewards of the planet’s most biodiverse territories, is a crucial step that decision-makers must take in the second part of COP16 in Rome. We, the Waorani, have worked throughout 2024 on a Post-Referendum Action Plan for Yasuní, charting a path toward a fossil-free model in our ancestral land. This strategy has become a regional and global reference in the face of government and extractive industry inaction, which continues to exploit our territories. However, to make this a reality, it is urgent to secure direct financing that supports the implementation of our Action Plan, meets our needs, and at the same time, ensures the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples in recent contact and voluntary isolation who inhabit this megadiverse territory.”

Augusto Duran, Energy Transition Coordinator at MOCICC (Citizens’ Movement Against Climate Change):

“The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, and the many crises we face today all stem from a common cause: a hegemonic model reliant on fossil fuels. It is astonishing that after 16 Conferences of the Parties on biodiversity and 29 on climate change, governments are only now acknowledging the deep connection between these crises—yet they still irresponsibly exclude from their discussions the urgent need to phase out oil, gas, coal, and all forms of extractivism. From social movements, frontline communities, Indigenous peoples, and organized civil society, we will continue demanding that wealthy nations take responsibility for their historical role and commit to a binding agreement that ensures a socio-ecological transition with, by, and for our people—our core demand for the conclusion of COP16 and the road to COP30.”

Karla Maass Wolfenson, Campaigns and Advocacy Lead at CAN Latin America and Interim Director of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance:

“In Rome, countries must take a firm stand against the measures and perspectives promoted by the Trump administration, reaffirming their commitment to biodiversity protection. This means ensuring public funding for conservation rather than relying on the goodwill of private actors or philanthropy. It is crucial for countries to send a clear signal of commitment and take the lead in capitalizing the fund. Likewise, recognizing the role and needs of Indigenous peoples, it is essential to secure their direct access to funding and establish effective mechanisms to guarantee its implementation.”

Juan Pablo Osornio, Director of Advocacy at Earth Insight:

“If countries truly want to achieve synergies between climate and biodiversity, the 18% overlap between oil and gas blocks and key biodiversity areas that exists today must be eliminated. The biodiversity crisis will not be solved without cooperation. Unfortunately, trust among the CBD Parties has been eroded. A first step in rebuilding that trust is a solid plan to achieve the Resource Mobilization targets.”

Victoria Emanuelli, Lead Campaigner at 350.org Latin America:

“COP16 made it clear that biodiversity and climate change must be addressed in synergy. It also reaffirmed that Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other traditional community leaderships must be represented at decision-making tables. Unfortunately, some of the negative trends seen in past Climate COPs repeated themselves: a strong extractivist fossil fuel lobby blocking efforts to move away from gas and oil, and a lack of political will from Northern countries to finance biodiversity conservation and a just energy transition in the Global South.”

Ana Di Pangracio, Biodiversity Coordinator at FARN (Environment and Natural Resources Foundation):

“Eliminating harmful subsidies to biodiversity, including those for fossil fuels, is key to closing the financing gap and ensuring a just transition. Without robust monitoring of the Global Biodiversity Framework and active civil society participation, we risk being left with empty commitments. Environmental organizations and communities play a crucial role in holding governments accountable and strengthening the global review of the 2030 targets.”

Sofía Jarrín Hidalgo, Western Amazon Defense Advisor at Amazon Watch:

“COP16 presents a key opportunity to mainstream the rights of women and other identities into global targets. Countries must ensure that a rights-based, gender-sensitive approach is integrated into the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, guaranteeing participation in decision-making and access to funding in alignment with Target 23 and the CBD’s Gender Action Plan.”

Carola Mejía, Climate Justice, Transition and Amazon Coordinator of LATINDADD:

“We demand that the governments around the world implement urgent actions to halt the environmental crises that have been generated by economic systems based on the extraction and accumulation of wealth for the benefit of the few. We also demand that the main climate and ecological debtors of the Global North, and the international financial institutions and multilateral banks, take concrete measures to channel fair, accessible and debt-free financing, mainly from public sources, to protect life and nature. This also implies to stop financializing nature and to stop promoting false solutions linked to financing such as market-based mechanisms, for example biodiversity credits, and other instruments such as debt-for-nature swaps, which have proven to be very limited in closing the financing gap and resolving the debt crisis, and which under increasingly complex and non-transparent schemes, mainly benefit private and/or financial sector intermediaries and violate the rights of local communities.”

Emilio Spataro, Biodiversity Diplomacy Associate of GFLAC (Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean):

“Direct access to funding for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, local communities, women and youth is undoubtedly one of the most important issues for the fulfillment of the objectives of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It is essential for the money to flow quickly, in an accessible manner with traceability and transparency to the territories where these social sectors are defending biodiversity and, at the same time, suffering destruction on the front line. At the same time, the amount of money needed to close the financing gap for biodiversity (at least $700 billion a year) is so enormous that it will only be possible to incorporate biodiversity into a true reform of the international financial system. The new instruments under discussion, together with direct access to finance, should be part of the final texts at the Rome plenary.”

Climate and Biodiversity Crises: Two Sides of the Same Coin

In October 2024, civil society organizations arrived at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, with a clear demand: in order to reverse and halt biodiversity loss, as set out in the Global Framework, the drivers of the climate crisis must be addressed.

The inclusion of a specific agenda item to address the synergies between the climate and biodiversity crises was a clear recognition of their deep interconnection and a possibility to advance the commitments set out in the Global Stocktake established under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2023. However, in Cali, the countries missed the opportunity to recognize the urgent need to abandon fossil fuels and halt the advance of extractivism in areas of high biodiversity, such as the Amazon, which are fundamental to protect global climate stability.

Following limited progress in the negotiations under the UN Conference on Climate Change in Baku at the end of 2024, it is essential that countries demonstrate during the upcoming sessions in Rome the political will to push for a just energy transition and the protection of ecosystems and their defenders. This leadership is especially critical in a context where major polluters, such as the United States, are ignoring the damage and losses caused by extreme weather events and the constant warnings from science and even the World Economic Forum.

In advance of COP30, which will be held at the end of the year in Belém, countries should take advantage of every opportunity to rebuild trust and promote enabling conditions for effective coordination in addressing both crises, ensuring compliance with both the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Biodiversity Finance Strategy and Financial Mechanism 

Discussions on both the strategy and the financial mechanism for biodiversity failed to be resolved in Cali, despite the fact that the parties have recognized the existence of a gap of millions of dollars to reverse and halt biodiversity loss, and the need to redirect subsidies, such as those provided for fossil fuels, toward activities in favor of ecosystem protection.

The need for biodiversity funds and the complexity of identifying sustained sources will require innovative mechanisms to ensure debt-free financing to facilitate national actions by those who are unfairly bearing the brunt of the environmental crisis. False solutions based on market mechanisms that, far from representing structural solutions to the crisis of biodiversity loss, contribute to the debt crisis faced by several countries in the Global South must also be avoided.

During the extraordinary meeting in Rome, countries will have three days to make progress toward the constitution of an independent Biodiversity Fund and ensure mechanisms to favor transparency, participation, and agility in the allocation of resources. Stagnant positions such as those held by the parties in Cali are not conducive to the fulfillment of common objectives and collective needs. 

In 2024, one of the biggest challenges at COP16 on Biodiversity and COP29 on Climate Change was the failure of the richest (and historically most polluting) countries to meet their financing commitments. While COP29 reached an agreement for a $300 billion package, which is insufficient compared to the $1.3 trillion per year experts say is needed for developing economies to advance their energy transition, at COP16, industrialized countries blocked a specific fund for biodiversity, leaving Southern nations with little hope of implementing their national plans to protect their natural ecosystems quickly and effectively.

As COP16 reconvenes in Rome, discussions on financing must evolve into concrete commitments to safeguard strategic ecosystems such as the Amazon in order to protect biodiversity and ensure climate stability. Converging actions such as phasing out fossil fuels and protecting areas of high biodiversity must shape an ambitious and equitable global response in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil.

Media contacts

Lays Ushirobira, Stand.earth: +34 685 20 05 91 / lays.ushirobira@stand.earth
Danae Alexia Tzicas, GGON: +54 911 33802441 / danae@ggon.org