The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) will be held from 7 to 19 December in Montreal, Canada. It will be a once-in-a-decade opportunity to usher in a new global framework to protect and conserve the world’s biodiversity.
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) -- the world’s largest funder of biodiversity protection, nature restoration, pollution reduction, and climate change response in developing countries that works with several UN agencies including the UN Environment Programme -- talks about what to expect on the road to COP15 and why we need to do much more to protect the environment.
Question: What is your big message for COP27?
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez: My big message is one simple message, which is, we should really understand that we are not anymore negotiating climate action, we're here to work on implementation. For the GEF, it is extremely important that everybody understands that we are in a process where we need to invest in building capacities to improve transparency, monitoring and reporting.
Without that key investment, assessing progress in the countries’ commitment towards the Paris Agreement will be extremely complicated. This is a moment for all of us to really understand what are the very specific actions and investments that we all need to do to implement the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions). The NDCs are a political aspiration. We need to understand that we need to develop policies, frameworks, the right institutions and operational plans. And we're far from getting there.
Here, we have representation from the countries but this is the representation of the executive branch. Most of these plans and ideas need to go to national congresses and partners, where a different ballgame will begin. We need to understand what is the kind of support that countries need to [put in place] - these frameworks, policies, [and] operational plans - because at the end of the day, it is not just the commitment of the Head of State to vote over 1.5°C by 2050. What do we need? We need action. We need to back up that aspiration with concrete actions.
Question: Can you explain what you mean by “we are far from getting there”?
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez: We keep on growing in terms of net emissions and we keep on being far from the climate targets - and we are subjected to the impacts of climate change. What we see today, in terms of heavy floods, in terms of long drought, is something that the scientists told us about 10 years ago - that this will be the scenario. So what the scientists told us a decade ago or even two decades is happening right now.
Question: After COP27, we will be on the road to COP15 in Montreal which takes place next month. Where are we at on biodiversity now?
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez: We'll be having the COP next month. It will be a Paris Agreement or a Copenhagen situation - we are in between both of them. There's so much on the line at this point with regards to the CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] because we're working in defining a decade-long framework for nature conservation.
Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are the two sides of the same coin. I think that this is something that we understood a decade ago, and we're working for more integrations across the different conventions.
Question: On biodiversity, what are some of the contentious issues on the table?
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez: The most contentious issue is who is going to pay the bill… which is a never ending discussion also here in the climate convention [COP27]. I think that we need to overcome that question, based on a common understanding that it is in the self-interest of the countries to protect nature. And all countries should work based on that common baseline. Unfortunately, this is not happening.
There's a lot of ideological issues that are coming up into the discussion which doesn't help us generate an ambitious framework. But not only an ambitious framework but also a global agreement on how all countries will mobilize financial resources from all sources [and] not just from a few from all sources.
At the same time… we need to stop those investments that destroy nature. This is a very important element that has been brought in the last few years and it is not easy. This has to do with oil and gas subsidies, and subsidies in the agricultural and fishing sectors. It has to do with many other perverse incentives that are already in place.
Dealing with those perverse incentives is politically extremely complicated. Nevertheless, we need to address them. I think that we are in a moment where the science and the data are there so we can actually go forward.
Read what other prominent Voices from COP27 are saying about the themes, negations and the way forward.
