Attendees highlighted the urgency to bring the private sector on board for sustainability endeavors on Tuesday at the high-level plenary session of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Colombia's southwestern city of Cali.
Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, made his opening remarks with a call for the world to be conscious of its economic model that has put sustainability at the bottom of priorities.
"[we need] Another way of producing that draws away from greed and chooses sustainability for humanity on this planet and not just the sustainability of greed, and making more money，" said Gustavo Petro.
COP16 has been labeled by Colombian officials as a summit to take action. The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity passed 23 nature protection targets two years ago in Montreal, Canada. The 196 countries that signed the agreement have five years to meet goals like the global agreement to protect 30 percent of the world's land, ocean and freshwater by 2030.
The attendance has been very high for this type of summit, with more than 23,000 delegates and a reported half a million citizens visiting cultural and informative side events in the first week.
Six heads of state and 110 ministers from the 196 countries that signed the agreement attended the high-level meeting. Presidents of Colombia, Ecuador, Armenia, Surinam, Guine-Bissau and Haiti all made remarks at the opening ceremony.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres outlined the importance of what is to come this week at COP16. The world is at war with nature, he said, a war where there will be no winners.
"We cannot afford to leave Cali without new pledges to actively capitalize the Global Diversity Framework Fund and without commitments to mobilize other resources of public and private finance to deliver the framework in full, and we must bring the private sector on board. Those profiting from nature cannot treat it like the free infinite resource. They must step back and contribute to its protection and restoration," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Funding gap to support sustainability highlighted at COP16 high-level plenary session
