ROME — Three days. That’s how much time world countries have to agree on a recipe to channel billions into biodiversity conservation.
But to reach a deal at talks that kick off at the headquarters of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome on Tuesday, they will first have to restore trust in multilateralism at a moment when global diplomatic tensions are at fever pitch.
It was always going to be difficult. Negotiations during the first round of the United Nations’ COP16 biodiversity talks in Colombia last November collapsed without a deal on financing nature restoration in poorer countries, leaving bad blood among governments of the global north and south. Those fundamental disagreements remain.
But it will be made doubly hard by escalating geopolitical and trade disputes that are forcing countries to shift their priorities — and by a new United States administration that is openly hostile to environmental multilateralism and has taken a sledgehammer to U.S. foreign aid.
