Mexico will arrive at the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP16) amid changes and adjustments. After six years in office, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was replaced by President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo on October 1. Under this new administration, the newly appointed environmental officials will represent the country at this international event.
The COP16 on Biodiversity will bring together representatives from 196 countries between October 21 and November 1 in Cali, Colombia. At the last COP15, held in 2022 in Canada, nations committed themselves to reducing biodiversity loss with four objectives for 2050 and 23 goals for 2030 that were established in the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework for Biological Diversity (GBF).
This year, countries must submit their national plans to achieve these goals.
“We had until August 1 of this year to upload our national goals to the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) Information Facilitating Mechanism and Mexico complied. We were able to establish 48 national goals aligned with the Global Framework (GBF),” explained Andrea Cruz Angón, director of Biodiversity Cooperation, of the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), in an interview for this publication.
Cruz Angón, together with Hesiquio Benítez Díaz, director of cooperation and implementation in biodiversity, and the international affairs coordinator Mónica Alegre González will travel on behalf of CONABIO to the COP16 on Biodiversity. The group of attendees from other institutions such as the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is yet to be made public.
However, the strategy was worked on throughout the year between the different institutions. CONABIO specialists report that it was a task of almost two thousand hours with more than 200 public servants. “I think it's very important to mention that the context in which the goals were formulated was with the change of administration (presidential elections),” said Cruz Angón.
There is talk of 48 goals, since they are based on the 23 established based on the GBF and 25 are actions derived from these. Among the main ones are having participation mechanisms that include indigenous peoples, the prevention and control of invasive species, the restoration of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, sustainability in sectors such as livestock and fishing, among others. All for the year 2030.
“I think there will be a wake-up call to the relatively low compliance of countries with the commitment to raise the targets to the Facilitating Mechanism. Out of 196 parties, (about) 50 countries complied and it's worrying because it results in having no goals to report or follow,” Cruz Angón explained.
The issues of Mexico
“It's a very broad agenda,” said Benítez Díaz, director of cooperation and implementation in biodiversity at CONABIO, on the issues to be addressed at COP16 on Biodiversity.
“Mexico is strong in terms of technical capacity. We are interested in the approval of a global work program on biodiversity with a focus on health and how we can prevent future pandemics,” the biologist explained about the agenda of issues that the country will bring to the event.
In addition to this program, CONABIO specialists believe that there are strengths to address the global strategy for plant conservation and the sustainable use of wildlife. The latter seeks opportunities in rural areas so that their sustainable practices can cover the national and international markets.
“Mexico has contributed well to issues of integrating biodiversity with other sectors. We believe that it is a super important issue how we relate to other agencies of the federal government, in this case that participate in primary productivity such as agriculture or fishing,” said Benítez Díaz.
It also recognizes that there are some slopes, mainly with marine and coastal biodiversity. This includes a work program for islands. In Mexico there are more than four thousand, several of them with problems due to invasive species that put native life at risk.
However, these issues have yet to be reviewed by the new government, which has led to delays. Although CONABIO officials acknowledge during the interview that they feel confident because there is continuity between the public servants who participate, as is the case of biologist Alicia Bárcena, the new Secretary of Environment, who served as chancellor for the last six years.
“The new administration will enter, but we are already 'oiled', we are working and the different agencies are still doing their thing. So we are confident that we will continue to do things as they should be,” Benítez added.
Climate finance and less money
One of the most prominent purposes at international events is conservation. With the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework, which was adopted at COP15 in 2022, countries committed to protecting 30% of the land and 30% of the oceans by the year 2030.
As part of the action plan that Mexico will bring to COP16 on Biodiversity, point 3.1 states that “by 2030, Mexico will increase to 22% of the protected land surface and 30% of the marine surface effectively through federal, state and municipal Protected Natural Area (ANP) systems.”
This goal details that, as of March of this year, the area of the country's ANP covers more than 28 million hectares on land (equivalent to 14.5% of the land surface) and more than 70 million in the sea (equivalent to 22.47%). This means that there is still a need to increase protected hectares on land by 7.5% and hectares at sea by 7.53%.
During the six-year term of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the creation of new federal ANPs, which are those administered by the National Commission for Protected Areas, stood out on conservation issues. 43 areas were decreed from 2018 to 2024, but almost half were announced just last January. With these appointments, the López Obrador government proclaimed itself as number one with “the most decrees in favor of life and biodiversity”.
What could be a contribution to the 2030 goals was hampered by the former president's own administration, reducing the budget allocated to the environmental institutions responsible for the ANP, as well as institutional adjustments that led to CONABIO moving from being an autonomous body to a unit of SEMARNAT.
“Mexico comes to COP16 with important challenges. Quite a few of them from many years ago, at least the last 10, in which we can see some intentions that tend to advance in meeting these objectives,” said Anaid Velasco, environmental lawyer and director for Mexico of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC).
Velasco recognizes the importance of new protected areas, as well as the publication of the Critical Habitat Agreement, which is an implementation of environmental law for the protection of areas with essential conditions for the survival of species. In the case of Mexico, this name was given in 2022 to the mountain wetlands “La Kisst” and “María Eugenia”, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, threatened by urbanization, the contamination of waste discharges and the use of pesticides.
“But all of this is a weak implementation if you don't have sufficient funding, that is, the means to carry out actions in the territories that involve these decrees that are made from a desk,” Velasco said.
Currently, the budget for protected areas is 10.7 pesos (less than one dollar) for each hectare allocated to conservation, according to the report “Taking care of what matters: the budget for the care of the environment and protected natural areas in PPEF 2024”, prepared by the coalition of non-profit environmental organizations Northwest Civil Society for Environmental Sustainability (NOSSA).
“We arrived at COP16 with 226 (federal) Protected Natural Areas, which is a substantial advance in the Mexican State's obligation to protect the territory, but we arrived with considerable debts in environmental policy instruments such as the lack of management programs and in the budget. It's not enough to decree, we need constant resources to be able to provide effective protection,” said Gina Chacon, director of Public Policy for Mexico at Wildlands Network, a member organization of NOSSA.
In addition to what is allocated to the Mexican administration, there is also international funding. The GFLAC study “Financing for Biodiversity in Mexico” shows that investments of up to 284 million dollars were received in 2021 alone, mainly from France, a country that has shown interest in defending biodiversity in Mexico. Germany and the United States also join the list.
“Mexico is one of the major recipients of international funding that is channeled through these instruments. These are strategic investments, but that should not make invisible the responsibility of public (State) funding for conservation,” said Velasco.
For his part, Cruz Angón, from CONABIO, said that funding will be one of the major issues of the COP16 on Biodiversity.
“It is always an issue to be discussed because there are not enough resources and of course that greater donations are needed from developed countries, but it is also necessary for party countries to seek public funding resources and through association with other actors such as the private sector, communities, and so on,” Cruz Angón explained.
Regarding the budget granted for the last six years to environmental agencies, CONABIO specialists point out during the interview that despite the financial cuts, goals were set according to the available funding.
“There have already been some expressions from the new administration about the need to increase the budget of the environmental sector, but the commitments that Mexico established in relation to global goals were made with a view to using what we have. In addition, the institutions of the Federal Public Administration have been doing a lot of work even with the challenge of having a small budget,” added Cruz Angón.
A Look to the Future
Bringing the goals to COP16 will not be enough. Among the actions of interest to Mexico is the monitoring framework with the indicators that will be used to evaluate compliance with them.
“This is how far the Global Framework was able to meet these 23 goals and how we are going to be reporting the goals that Mexico agreed with the different participants. Now the fish actually falls through the mouth,” Benítez said.
The GFLAC specialist emphasizes that it will be essential to include the indigenous peoples of Mexico and to take advantage of the areas of opportunity that come with the new president of Mexico and her cabinet.
“(About) the new head of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, Alicia Bárcena, we know that she has a curriculum that speaks for itself, a very well-known interest (in environmental matters) and that she gave a lot of results when she was in office at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), so we would love to see her management work up to these challenges,” added Velasco.
At the administrative level, since the news that CONABIO would join SEMARNAT, there has been talk of the disappearance of this commission, although the new president Claudia Sheinbaum has not reported on the matter.
“What they have told us is that for now we are the same and an evaluation process will come with the new administration to see the future of CONABIO. For now, we are still working as usual,” concluded Cruz Angón.
*This article was produced with the support of Climate Tracker Latin America and FES Transformation
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