President of the CBD COP16
Heads of States
Honorable Ministers
Excellencies
Esteemed Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
On behalf of the Hon. Prime Minister of Fiji, the Government of Fiji extends their heartfelt appreciation to the Government of Colombia for their warm hospitality and ongoing leadership as the host of COP 16.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen – the gravity and importance of our mandate cannot be underestimated. We are here to disrupt humankind’s destruction of nature and the trends that continue to push the limits of what the natural world can withstand and survive.
The generations that are represented here today inherited economic systems and practices that have disfigured the natural world and disregarded the sensitivity and value of biodiversity. We have perpetuated these practices with disturbing abandon. The current rate of global biodiversity loss is estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than the naturally occurring background extinction rate. It is now incumbent upon us that we do not pass on this same modus operandi to the next generation.
Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework we agreed to not only halt but to reverse the biodiversity crisis by 2030 and we are here to implement not reinvent our intentions. The message that emanates from COP16 must be unequivocal in its assurance and ambition.
In the Pacific islands, the real and tangible urgency we feel daily as we grapple with both the impacts of climate change and the difficult trade-offs involved with balancing economic development, social protection, and environmental conservation priorities across all sectors of our economy and society.
We look to the developed world to facilitate and support the step-change we as guardians of biodiversity stand ready to deliver. The trends and direction of travel is clear. We must put in place the resource mobilization required to catalyze a global and whole-of-society approach here in Cali because, Ladies and Gentlemen – to put it simply – we are deciding here whether to deliver inter-generational hope or to become complicit in creating inter-generational regret.
Recalling the commitment to mobilise 20bn USD per year by 2025, we are concerned by the major shortfall in the financing that has flowed to developing countries to support protection and restoration efforts.
New commitments to finance biodiversity protection over the past eighteen months have been sparse, further complicating efforts to meet global biodiversity targets. This lack of financial mobilization, combined with insufficient national actions, threatens to undermine the progress needed to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
We cannot feign to promote human rights-based approaches across any areas of development if we scuttle the environment and biodiversity that are critical to the stability, safety and resilience of society.
We must ensure that the global review process reflects the voices of rights holders, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, youth and children. Resource mobilization strategies must deliver financing through equitable allocation processes that ensure these groups can access resources.
We are resolute in the need to secure predictable, new, additional, and adequate finance pursuant to existing obligations under Article 20. and To increase total financial resources to support biodiversity protection we need to look beyond existing arrangements and consider the scale of the task and challenge we face. It is high time Parties formalized and organized the structure for resource mobilization under the CBD and take a decision to establish a dedicated Global Biodiversity Fund here in Cali. In doing so we will send the unequivocal message that our implementation efforts have a resource base, that the organizations, communities, and peoples engaged in protection and conservation will be supported, and that national commitments and intention to resuscitate and support the endangered, fragile and unique will be assisted and translated into solutions.
Vinaka Vakalevu.
Dr Sivendra Michael, Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Fiji.
Photo by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis