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
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
