At last we have the first global plan to finance biodiversity conservation. It has been four months after the end of COP16 in Cali, Colombia, which ended bittersweetly with the suspension of the negotiations due to lack of quorum. That was the reason behind the three extra days of negotiations in Rome which, fortunately, have borne fruit.

This second round of negotiations had an even more geopolitically complicated game board than that of Cali. On the one hand, Susana Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister and president of COP16, announced her resignation as minister at the beginning of February, which could have a negative impact on the negotiations. And on the other hand, everything that is happening in the US, with anti-conservation policies and the withdrawal of funding for any environmental issue.

The issues on which consensus has been reached in this second round of COP16 are those that guarantee the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework. They include, on the one hand, resource mobilisation and a financial mechanism, and on the other hand, the monitoring framework.

As always in these kinds of negotiations, ambition has been on the low side, but with the way the world has been going lately, I am left with the incredibly positive part that we now, at last, have a clear roadmap for conserving and restoring biodiversity, and the financial resources to carry it out.

The biodiversity crisis we are experiencing is unfolding on a global scale and therefore mitigation measures must also be global. This is the underlying idea of the UN Conference on Biodiversity. Four months ago, negotiations to establish a funding agreement for nature conservation unfortunately failed at the meeting in Colombia. Despite the initial uncertainty, the new COP16 meeting in Rome represents hope for biodiversity, as this time a consensus has been reached. This consensus includes two fundamental measures. The first is the mobilisation of resources and the creation of mechanisms to finance nature conservation. The second is the creation of a framework for monitoring the agreement reached.

Although not very ambitious, the agreement reached at COP16 in Rome represents a clear roadmap for nature conservation. The next step is to materialise the agreed measures and to do so in a global way, where the whole of society and governments are involved regardless of ideologies. We depend on nature and it is our decision and duty to conserve it.

Biodiversity conservation is an urgent necessity that calls for joint action by all governments and key global actors. The irretrievable loss of living beings is both a symptom and a cause of the planetary deterioration driven by the unchecked growth of the human species. The simplification of the biosphere, the trail of extinctions that we are leaving behind our apparent progress in synergies that are impossible to predict, is affecting the conditions in which life, including human life, develops. Hence the urgency of reaching agreements that define a global conservation framework that lays the foundations for effectively halting the loss of species. Just as there are already mechanisms in place to safeguard the climate, it is essential to start taking measures in the same direction for the effective protection of biodiversity. Not only should CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions be reduced, but the status of species should no longer be undermined and the populations and ranges of endangered organisms should be stabilised, if not increased.

This is the importance of the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP16) that closed last night in Rome with an agreement that timidly invites hope. According to the president of COP16, the Colombian Susana Muhamad, financial resources have been secured, how to manage them and how to monitor them have been defined. An almost idyllic framework. The difficulties lie in the extent to which governments and entities will take this agreement seriously, bearing in mind the new global socio-political context in which trends are undisguisedly pointing in the opposite direction. Decarbonisation entails considerable technological development with direct consequences on the economy that make it attractive to financial actors. Halting and reversing the extinction processes of flora and fauna is a much more complex problem, as its implementation may require particular considerations, species by species, and its financial effects, although they could be comparable to a certain extent with carbon markets, are not as popular at the moment.

The agreement reached in Rome, modest in scope and with consequences yet to be seen, at least establishes formal starting conditions for the take-off of an eventual recovery of biodiversity. That is no small thing. Let us hope that the goodwill shown by the small group of leaders present at the closing of the summit is not twisted by the weight of the interests of the great powers or by the reckless disdain that we humans tend to show for lives other than our own.

After the disappointment of Colombia, the fact that a global agreement on funding for nature conservation has been reached in Rome is certainly good news. But the most important challenge is to secure and ensure that funding is distributed fairly and equitably over the next five years in order to develop the Global Biodiversity Framework.

The Framework must not be a mere declaration of intent; we can no longer afford to do so. It must move forward and succeed in halting the decline in biodiversity. In a global system full of uncertainties and conflicts, the available financial resources, which are still insufficient, must be used in a very effective and fair way, guaranteeing direct access to indigenous peoples and local communities, who have a key role in biodiversity conservation.

The first reaction of Susana Muhamad [the summit's president] after COP16 is one of hope after the agreement reached. However, it remains to be seen how these proposed financing measures will manifest themselves. Given that one of the main causes of biodiversity loss is the degradation of habitats, it is to be expected and desirable that many of these measures will focus on their conservation.