Highlights and images for 26 February 2025

“We will be like bees flying around you,” President Susana Muhamad (Colombia) warned delegates at the beginning of the morning session, describing the intensity and pace of informal consultations on resource mobilization with a biodiversity-inspired image.

Want to dig deeper into today's talks? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

In the meantime, plenary negotiations stumbled through procedural difficulties over the order of items on the agenda, protracted discussions over footnotes, and pleas to avoid opening discussions on clean text. Following lengthy breaks to allow for informal consultations over seemingly less important matters, several participants agreed that such disagreements reflect “a deepening lack of trust.”  

Despite procedural hiccups, plenary agreed on several outstanding matters in the draft decisions on the financial mechanism and on the monitoring framework for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). 

Deliberations on mechanisms for planning, monitoring, reporting, and review, including the global review of collective progress in GBF implementation, focused on the communication of commitments by non-state actors. Several parties wished to clarify the process for reporting commitments by non-state actors to the online reporting tool of the Clearing-house Mechanism, to maintain parties’ oversight of the process and avoid greenwashing. 

An evening plenary addressed a revised draft decision on resource mobilization, developed as a result of informal consultations. At the core of the updated proposal is a decision to enhance global biodiversity finance and to fully implement Article 21 of the Convention (Financial Mechanism) by 2030, by: 

• assessing and improving the mobilization of finance from all sources; 
• assessing and improving the performance of existing instruments; 
• designating or establishing a dedicated global instrument, or set of instruments, for biodiversity finance, with a view to achieving full operationalization at the 19th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 19), to be held in 2030; and 
• reaching a conclusion at COP 18 in 2028 on the operating entity or entities of the financial mechanism, in accordance with Article 21. 

The revised draft further establishes an intersessional process and a road map to deliver this mandate.

Many parties expressed their appreciation for the significant efforts made to reach consensus, and requested time to analyze the draft and consult within their respective groups. Several delegates considered the proposal a good basis to work on. Many developing countries lamented that the proposal lacks ambition and specific targets, and further postpones the crucial decision on the establishment of a dedicated global biodiversity finance mechanism. Negotiations will resume on Thursday.