By Jake Spring

CALI, Colombia (Reuters) – Rich nations appear to be reaching a limit on how much they are willing to pay to conserve nature around the world, instead shifting the focus of the two-week U.N. biodiversity summit to discussions about private money for to fill the funding gap.

At the COP16 negotiations in Cali, Colombia, countries failed to figure out how they would mobilize $200 billion annually in conservation finance by 2030, including $30 billion that would come directly from rich nations.

This money, committed two years ago as part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Agreement, is intended to fund activities that boost nature, such as sustainable agriculture or patrolling wildlife reserves.

But there was no consensus as talks dragged on beyond the scheduled conclusion of Friday’s summit, during which dozens of delegates walked out. By Saturday morning’s roll call, there was no quorum among the nearly 200 nations for an agreement to be passed, forcing organizers to abruptly suspend the meeting.

“I am saddened and angered by the non-result of COP16,” said Shilps Gautam, chief executive of project finance company Opna.

“The wild thing about nature funding discussions is that the numbers being discussed are already small.”

Human activities such as agriculture, mining and urban development are increasingly pushing nature into crisis, with around 1 million species of plants and animals considered to be at risk of extinction.

Climate change, the result of burning fossil fuels, also adds to nature’s woes by raising temperatures and disrupting weather cycles.

The countries will meet again in Azerbaijan next week for the UN’s COP29 climate change summit, which will once again focus on the steep need for funding from rich nations to their poorer counterparts to shoulder climate costs.

LITTLE MONEY FROM RICH NATIONS

Even before the talks broke down, developed countries signaled their unwillingness to provide large amounts of cash.

European governments, including Germany and the Netherlands, have slashed their foreign aid budgets over the past year, while France and Britain are also cutting back.

Government funding for development, which specifically targets nature conservation abroad, has fallen to $3.8 billion in 2022, compared to $4.6 billion in 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

At COP16, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on countries to make significant new contributions to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.

Reply has been disabled. Nations at COP16 pledged $163 million in contributions to the fund, bringing total contributions to about $400 million — far from a major contribution to the $30 billion goal from nations by 2030.

The United States, which is not a party to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, did not contribute.

“Public money is already being mobilized as much as we can,” Florika Fink-Hooijer, the European Union’s director-general for environment, told reporters at the summit.

“Now we have to look at other sources of funding.”

PRIVATE CASH

When it came to seeking private capital, delegates at the COP16 summit agreed on a plan to charge pharmaceutical and other companies for using genetic information in the research and development of new commercial products.

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca and Sanofi did not respond to a request for comment on the deal.

Experts estimate the plan could generate about $1 billion annually.

That still doesn’t cover the billions needed to stop the collapse of ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest or coral reefs. The world will have to find ways to attract private investment in nature-friendly projects, said Marcos Neto, director of global policy at the UN Development Programme.

Some tools include green bonds or debt-for-nature swaps, where countries refinance their debt at lower interest rates to spend the savings on conservation. The World Economic Forum estimates that debt-for-kind swaps could generate $100 billion in in-kind financing.

(Reporting by Jake Spring; Additional reporting by Simon Jessop and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Katy Daigle and Diane Craft)