The delegates dispatched to the conference failed to reach an agreement on what the environmental advocacy described as the main objectives: establishing standards for tracking the progress of biodiversity loss and financing the efforts of developing countries to stop biodiversity loss. The global community was expected to agree on a set of rules designed to stop the biodiversity loss by the end of the decade. Instead the conference fizzled out in uncoordinated fashion on Saturday, with participants leaving the site after overnight negotiations hit an impenetrable gridlock over the issue of financing.
The failure to reach a comprehensive agreement on financing is alarming, according to WWF Finland. “We western states have a duty to support developing countries because we are primarily responsible for the exacerbation of both biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. On a daily basis, we are consuming products that are produced elsewhere, and we are thereby outsourcing our detrimental environmental effects to other countries,” said Tarvainen.
WWF Finland also expressed its frustration with the Finnish government’s failure to finalise its biodiversity strategy by the conference, a commitment it made along with other countries at Cop-15 in Montreal, Canada, in 2022. Only 44 countries ultimately managed to unveil their strategies before or during Cop-16. “We now expect an exhaustive strategy that addresses several open questions about, for example, the roles and responsib.