Laura Klein | Latin America Fellow
President Gustavo Petro announcing the city of Cali as the host for UN Biodiversity COP16 in 2024. Image sourced from The Colombian Government via Wikimedia Commons.
Latin America is a region of central importance to biodiversity and the climate crisis. Fittingly, Cali Colombia played host to the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) from October to November 2024. The central focus of the conference was the practical implementation of the Kumming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and its vision to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2050. While this agenda is greatly ambitious and will be extremely challenging to achieve with even minimal levels of cynicism, it is a crucial one. International headlines offer a disappointing summary of COP16’s success as the conference - “ends in bitterness”, “fizzes out”, “ends in disarray and indecision”.
If biodiversity can be conceptualised as a public good, meaning that sustaining and even increasing levels of biodiversity is in the interest of all, what is stopping Latin America and the rest of the international community from converting the currently destructive status quo into an actioned agenda for positive change? The answer is twofold: an absence of sustained regional cooperation given predominantly economic and country-specific concerns, and a lack of international financial will on behalf of developed nations to provide unconditional financial assistance.
Due to its international environmental significance, Latin America has great potential for sustainable growth - had it the appropriate funds. It is home to one of the world’s most critical sources of environmental infrastructure. The Amazon Rainforest, nearly the size of continental United States, houses one-third of the world’s species. The earth below is also a source of critical minerals including lithium and copper, used for low carbon technologies such as wind and solar power and electric motors.
In spite of this, Latin American countries (LACs), like many in the Global South, have been historically sidelined on issues of biodiversity and climate in the international arena. LACs tend to be treated as a homogenous group despite important domestic differences and divergent agendas, particularly for those with economic growth models that rely on resource extraction and agriculture. For example, Brazil’s economy is dependent on export growth in agriculture sectors and in 2024 was the world's largest beef and soybean exporter. Soybean crops are the second largest driver of deforestation and cattle ranching the first, accounting for 80 per cent of deforestation in the Amazon. Latin America’s deeply rooted extractive colonial legacies couple with current subordinate positions in key global value chains - trade and finance in particular - to influence environmentally unsustainable models of economic growth in the region.
Inducing structural transformation under the weight of such a conditioning legacy is hard. Nevertheless, it is a task that the region must grapple with, and the implications of not doing so are already coming to the fore. During the past decade, the Amazon has become a regional tipping point transforming into a carbon source rather than a sink, emitting more carbon than it is able to store. The ecosystem’s resilience is now faltering due to these harmful human interventions, while also having to face the extended vulnerabilities of climate change.
Differing economic orientations favouring industries with negative climate and biodiversity implications create barriers to international convergence in multilateral fora, as seen at COP16. Fossil fuel extraction, for example, threatens the fabric of our environments primarily due to its pollution, land degradation and sea level rise effects. Currently, most countries in the region are exporting either or a combination of oil and natural gas. LACs currently account for 15 per cent of total global resources in these sectors and are increasing oil production, particularly in Brazil and Guyana, into the foreseeable future.
Colombia, in recognising the catastrophic consequences of this, harnessed their power as the host of COP16 to champion a proposal titled the ‘Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty’. This initiative explicitly connects climate change and biodiversity agendas with a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in the energy sectors. However, COP16 ended with these negotiations failing and the exclusion of the elimination of fossil fuel extraction from any of its final texts.
Even if countries agreed to radical change as outlined in the GBF, success would require significant additional finance. Developing countries of the Global South, and notably in Latin America where the conference took place, were left high and dry after rich nations blocked a proposal to fund the Global Biodiversity Framework, which currently works with less than $500 million USD/year. This is only 2.5 per cent of what was committed to mobilising international assistance for developing countries during COP15.
Politicians reinforced their state’s commitments in the build-up to COP16 in Cali but stopped short of following through financially. This pattern continued at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in November 2024. Negotiations surrounding finance stagnated, with the one trillion a year (USD) in external finance stated necessary by experts to assist emerging markets and developing countries reduced to a pledge of 300 billion USD. The consequences of this will be severe, particularly for emerging economies such as those in Latin America with significant environmental holdings but limited financial resources. It is other, richer nations that have the ability to mobilise the resources to assist mitigation and adaptation efforts, but lack the willpower to do so.
Biodiversity forms a web of life that encompasses all our political, economic and social livelihoods with over half of global GDP dependent on natural resources. Latin America’s biodiversity is intrinsically linked to the global effort to avoid biodiversity losses that steer us away from climate catastrophe. However, in order to achieve this, the gaps between ambition, policy, finance, and implementation must be closed. Finding the necessary willpower is easier said than done.
Laura Klein is the July-December 2024 Latin America Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. She recently completed her Bachelor of International Relations at the Australian National University majoring and minoring in Spanish and Latin American Studies, and has since been accepted to a Masters program at the London School of Economics where she looks forward to further engaging in research. She has a deep affection and respect for the Latin American region and in her writing, strives to destigmatise and promote the opportunities that abound in Latin America, especially to an Australian audience.
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