UN biodiversity summit opens in Colombia with calls for action, finance

Cali, Colombia: The world s biggest nature protection conference opened in Colombia on Monday with calls for urgent action and financing to reverse hu...

Cali, Colombia: The world's biggest nature protection conference opened in Colombia on Monday with calls for urgent action and financing to reverse humankind's rapacious destruction of biodiversity.

With about a million known species worldwide estimated to be at risk of extinction, Colombian Environment Minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad warned delegates: "The planet doesn't have time to lose."

"We all agree that we are underfunded for this mission, we all agree that we need further sources of funding," the minister told delegates from nearly 200 countries as she opened the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

About 23,000 delegates, including some 100 government ministers and a dozen heads of state were accredited for the largest-ever biodiversity COP, running until November 1 in the Colombian city of Cali.

Themed "Peace with Nature," the summit has the urgent task of coming up with monitoring and funding mechanisms to ensure 23 UN targets agreed at COP15 two years ago can be met by 2030 to "halt and reverse" the loss of nature.