Two years after coming to a historic agreement to “halt and reverse” nature loss, countries are preparing to gather in Cali, Colombia for the latest round of UN biodiversity talks.
The COP16 biodiversity summit – officially, the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity – will run from 21 October to 1 November. Around 14,000 delegates are expected to attend the talks in Colombia’s third most populous city.
At the previous summit, COP15, which was held in Montreal in December 2022, countries agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The GBF is a set of four goals and 23 targets with the overarching mission of reversing the decline of biodiversity around the world by 2030.
Up for negotiating in Cali will be a range of issues, including some traditionally contentious topics, such as finance for nature and the rules governing the access to digital sequence information.
But other issues, such as a global review of progress towards the goals and targets agreed at COP15 and the monitoring framework needed to assess said progress, will be new to the negotiating agenda in Colombia.
Unlike at COP15, around 10 heads of state are expected to attend the Cali summit, Carbon Brief understands.
To produce a “who wants what” interactive table, Carbon Brief has conducted an assessment of the key negotiating issues and the positions that various countries and negotiating blocs hold.
The first column shows the country, negotiating bloc or non-state actor. Note that negotiating blocs at UN biodiversity summits are far less formal than they are at climate summits.
The second column shows the major topics that will be discussed during the negotiations, while the third column lists more specific issues that fall under each of these topics.
The final column indicates the position that each grouping is likely to take on a particular issue at the summit. This ranges from “strongly support” – meaning the grouping is likely to be strongly pushing the issue – to “red line”, which means the grouping is likely to oppose this issue and show no room for compromise.
After the interactive table below, some of the key negotiating topics are explained.
(This is a “living document” that will be updated during the course of the summit. To suggest additions or amendments to the table, please email cropped@carbonbrief.org.)
Biodiversity finance
Finance is expected to be the running undercurrent throughout the COP16 biodiversity talks.
One biodiversity finance topic that will be closely watched is the level of commitment made by developed countries towards raising “at least $20bn a year” by 2025 for conservation in developing countries.
To date, only seven developed countries have contributed to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), for a total of $244m.
In the run-up to Cali, Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad “urged” governments from the global north to “make a gesture to increase trust in the conference and actually put their money” in the fund.
At the same time, some developing countries have reiterated their call for a separate fund under the direct authority of the COP to meet their needs.
Just as some countries are cautioning against “double-counting” of biodiversity development finance, others are calling for better monitoring of “private financing”, underlining that market mechanisms such as biodiversity offsets and credits cannot substitute for public finance flows from north to south.
Market mechanisms have also received increased pushback from countries and Indigenous groups in the run-up to Cali.
NBSAPs, global review and global report
At COP15, countries agreed to publish new plans for how they will tackle biodiversity loss and meet the goals of the GBF. They are called “national biodiversity strategies and action plans”, or “NBSAPs”.
The publishing of new NBSAPs was meant to ensure that countries actually implement the targets of the GBF within their borders. A lack of implementation was widely cited as one of the major factors behind the failure of the last set of global biodiversity rules, the Aichi targets agreed in 2011.
But Carbon Brief analysis shows that the vast majority of countries are set to miss the deadline to publish a new NBSAP ahead of COP16. Only a handful of countries have so produced NBSAPs, although Carbon Brief understands that several more will publish them during the summit.
In Cali, negotiators will need to grapple with countries’ collective failure to produce new NBSAPs and decide how to move forward.
At COP15, countries also agreed that a global analysis of NBSAPs should take place at COP16 and “subsequent COPs”.
A “global review” should then take place at COP17 in 2026 and COP19 in 2030, according to documents signed off by countries in Montreal.
At COP16, countries will need to negotiate the finer details of how these global reports and reviews should be conducted.
Digital sequence information
A subject that will be key to the success of COP16 is the negotiation on digital sequence information (DSI) from genetic resources – and how to fairly and equitably share the benefits derived from biodiversity’s rich genetic wealth.
In August this year, negotiators met in Montreal for five days of gruelling talks to streamline options for a one-of-a-kind global multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism (GMBSM) and a global fund.
While the meeting yielded a 29-paragraph draft decision for COP16, these options will need to be whittled down to reach a final outcome in Cali, in order to make both mechanism and fund operational.
Of these, the most critical and contested are whether benefit-sharing from DSI is voluntary or legally binding and how the mechanism will interact with national laws and measures around DSI.
Another key issue is whether the mechanism should cover all “public databases”.
While blocs such as the EU favour open-access databases, the African Group has proposed the CBD set up its own database, where DSI is made publicly available only with the prior consent of providers of genetic material.
Who pays into the fund, where the fund is housed, how benefits should be triggered, where money should flow and what it is spent on are other major points of divergence that observers expect will flare up in Cali, with ramifications for industry, academia and governments.
Countries have also differed on how the mechanism will promote access to non-monetary benefits, such as building capacity, sharing medicines or the transfer of climate-critical technologies developed with the use of DSI.
Monitoring framework
A critical component of assessing the world’s progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF is the monitoring framework.
For each goal and target, the current draft of the monitoring framework sets out options for one or more “headline” or “binary” indicators. (Headline indicators are based on sub-national, national, regional or global data, while binary indicators use yes/no questions to assess progress for targets that are not easily quantifiable.)
The framework also includes component and complementary indicators, which it says can be used to track specific aspects of progress that are not well-captured by the headline indicators.
In addition to holding differing opinions on how progress towards individual targets should be measured, countries are divided on how prescriptive the monitoring framework should be.
Many global-south countries feel that the monitoring approach should be flexible and voluntary, to account for differences in capabilities and resources between countries.
Additionally, lower-income countries are adamant that the monitoring framework must be accompanied by an ambitious finance package so that they can fulfil their obligations under the GBF.
Indigenous rights
Indigenous rights are set to be a priority theme at COP16.
Colombia’s presidency has stated that the summit “will contribute to the strengthening guarantees of recognition for Indigenous peoples and local communities” (IPLCs).
The inclusion of IPLCs within the negotiations is a priority for many countries, with some strongly supporting that they be “explicitly recognised” throughout the decisions.
Biodiversity financial mechanisms that benefit IPLCs are another major goal for these communities and bodies, with several constituencies requesting that IPLCs be able to directly access funds.
Several countries are also asking for the inclusion of “free, prior and informed consent” – namely, the right of IPLCs to be consulted on projects affecting their territories and grant or withhold their consent – within discussions about knowledge management, DSI and biodiversity finance.
Related to that is the recognition of traditional knowledge for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, held by IPLCs, including Afro-descendant and other ethnic groups.
Other issues
COP16 has a packed agenda, with various other issues for nations to discuss alongside the topics described above.
Countries could, for example, sign off on a global action plan on biodiversity and health, which has been negotiated over the past few years. This plan sets out a number of voluntary actions aiming to boost the profile of the ties between biodiversity and health.
At COP15, countries agreed to produce an updated version of the plan, based on inputs from different governments and stakeholders, such as Indigenous peoples and local communities.
A new draft has since been put together and is ready to be negotiated – and potentially signed off – in Cali.
Other items on the agenda include texts on the links between biodiversity and climate change, plus ways to combine efforts to tackle these and other interconnected issues.
At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year, the three presidents of the climate change, biodiversity and desertification COPs released a joint statement on climate, nature and people.
The countries that signed this statement promised “comprehensiveness and coherence” between their NBSAPs and their next national climate pledges, or NDCs, which are due to be submitted before COP30 in 2025.
Colombia has called for these pledges to be combined to ease the workload of putting them together and increase “synergies”, reports Reuters.
Invasive alien species, scientific and technical cooperation and challenges to the implementation of the GBF are among the other issues up for discussion in Cali.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP16 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP16 biodiversity summit
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.
Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.
Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.
Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.
The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.
A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.
Some medium-sized emitters
Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.
Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.
The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.
Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.
The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline
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