by Martina Fuchs
GENEVA, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International is calling on developed countries to provide urgent funding as the planet is teetering on critical climate tipping points.
The stark warning comes as world representatives are meeting at the 7th Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), in Vancouver, Canada, from Aug. 22-26. The GEF will launch a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBF Fund).
The GBF Fund is a new source of funding which aims to protect species and ecosystems globally, WWF said, as the world is faced with crises including record-breaking temperatures and wildfires.
"We're in a crisis age," Lin Li, senior director of global policy and advocacy at WWF International, told Xinhua in an interview. "Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate and global wildlife populations have plummeted by 69 percent on average since 1970."
"There are studies showing that the funding gap for biodiversity is about 700 billion U.S. dollars a year," she warned.
During the GEF assembly this week, WWF urged developed nations to meet their promise under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 to fund biodiversity action.
"We really hope that the countries going to the GEF will bring their ambitious contributions to the table. It's critically important to fill the funding gap so that we can jumpstart our implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework," Li said.
"We need to get the GBF Fund up and running as quickly as possible to kickstart the implementation for the future of the planet and mankind."
CHINA'S CONTRIBUTIONS
During the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in 2021, China announced an initiative to establish the Kunming Biodiversity Fund. It took the lead by investing 1.5 billion yuan (about 206 million U.S. dollars) in the fund.
"That was a kickstart for funding biodiversity," Li said. "In the GBF, China has been an active donor and recipient country under the GEF for the past 30 years."
The historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted under China's presidency in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022, setting the goal of reversing biodiversity loss by 2030.
"China's implementation of the GBF project has provided a lot of guidance, best practices, and training for other developing countries to duplicate. The GBF is also a place where China can play a global role as a multilateral platform," Li said.
COP28 IN UAE
Asked about the upcoming 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) from Nov. 30-Dec. 12 in the United Arab Emirates, Li emphasized that the top three priorities should be the phasing out of fossil fuels and fossil fuel subsidies, bringing nature to the center of combating climate change, and closing the finance gap.
"We are at a boiling stage, and not the warming stage anymore. We need to come together and really act," she said.
"We need to finally meet the goal for developed countries to mobilize the 100 billion U.S. dollars per year which was supposed to start in 2020," she added.
At the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries had already committed to a collective goal of mobilizing 100 billion U.S. dollars per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries. ■
