"Corporations have found ways to be heard during negotiations on reversing the drastic global decline in plant and animal life."

"Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia.

This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss.

Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

Joining them in Colombia are delegates and observers from powerful industry groups, which represent the companies whose operations are actively depleting the natural world. They range from the pesticide and biotechnology trade group CropLife International, to the commodities giant Bunge. Oil and gas majors such as ExxonMobil and Shell have sent staff to the summit, as have pharmaceutical giants such as GSK, and the multinational mining company Anglo American (see map, below)."

Hazel Healy and Rachel Sherrington report for DeSmog October 28, 2024. [2]