Negotiations at the world’s biggest nature conservation conference entered extra time in Cali, Colombia, on Friday as talks deadlocked on funding for efforts to “halt and reverse” species loss.
A closing plenary session, scheduled for 6:00 pm Colombian time (2300 GMT), had not started more than three hours later as smaller groups of negotiators huddled behind closed doors in a bid to iron out their differences.
The 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) opened on October 21 and was scheduled to close Friday, though many are now steeling themselves for a late night.
The conference, the biggest-ever meeting of its kind with some 23,000 registered delegates, is a follow-up to an agreement reached two years ago in Canada.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that emerged from COP15 identified 23 targets to halt humankind’s rapacious destruction of nature’s bounty.
These included placing 30 percent …