Negotiations at COP16, the UN Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, ended in chaos last Saturday, suspended as delegates left and quorum was lost. Officially the meeting did not end but hit the pause button, with key financial decisions left to be resolved at a follow-up meeting in Bangkok next year.

From following the negotiations and side talks on the ground, it is clear that two opposing visions for implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are coming to an impasse: on one side, the interests of international corporations, advanced by key countries of the global north; on the other, a diverse coalition of Indigenous communities, local groups and civil society allies with significant representation here in Colombia, fighting for a future grounded in nature’s and people’s rights, not profits.

According to the UN, $7 trillion in public and private financing was invested in ways that fuelled nature destruction and biodiversity loss in 2023 alone. Yet COP 16 gave little attention to halting these destructive financial flows. Instead, sectors like agribusiness, finance, mining, and fossil fuels were allowed space to actively distract from their role in profiting from biodiversity loss.

A big chunk of the conversation on finance was captured by market-centred narratives such as the financialisaton of nature through offsets and credits or weak nature disclosure frameworks that don’t align with the GBF, including the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

During the COP, BankTrack joined with partners including Rainforest Action Network to file a complaint to the stakeholder response mechanism of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) over its support for the TNFD, an initiative led by corporations that shields them from accountability and, as the complaint sets out, breaches UNEP policies on protecting environmental defenders, gender equality and access to information rights.

While the global economy remains entrenched in extractivism and inequality, real progress in mobilising resources for change requires transformative financial reform. COP16 has largely avoided this need for systemic change, with some honourable exceptions, including Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who called for a radical shift during the opening ceremony.

The newly established Cali Fund for Digital Sequence Information (DSI), a voluntary funding mechanism to distribute benefits derived from the use of genetic resources to the guardians of these resources, offers no real accountability or transparency. Instead, it is legitimising biopiracy by relying on corporate goodwill. This marks a continued refusal by developed countries to fulfil their benefit-sharing obligations.

Yet there is a significant win to celebrate: the establishment of the Subsidiary Body on Article 8J; the article of the Convention on Biological Diversity focused on traditional knowledge, innovations and practices. Recognising the critical role of Traditional Knowledge in advancing the GBF, this body, led by the Indigenous Caucus, should ensure Indigenous Peoples and local communities can actively shape biodiversity policy. It will also make it critical for banks to implement strong FPIC (free, prior and informed consent) policies and halt funding to extractive industries that notoriously violate human and nature rights.

Parties at COP 16 will resume discussions to approve a new “Strategy for Resource Mobilization” at a later date. Meanwhile, the TNFD is still referenced four times in the current draft of the strategy. BankTrack and allies will continue to argue that the TNFD has no place in this strategy and push for major financial sector reforms that are needed if the GBF objectives to halt and reverse biodiversity loss before 2030 will be achieved.