White Delegates from roughly 150 countries are scheduled to try to resolve disagreements and reach a consensus on how to move forward toward 2030 targets to stop catastrophic nature loss as the global biodiversity talks that broke down in November continue in Rome on Tuesday. After nations clashed during overtime negotiations on the establishment of a new global nature fund, the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, in Cali, Colombia, came to an unexpected halt. Now, negotiators will have to work quickly to reach a consensus on the best way to raise and allocate the money required to carry out the objectives of the historic nature agreement known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted in December 2022. The agreement would be "handicapped" if agreement could not be reached in Rome, according to Susana Muhamad, Colombia's departing environment minister and president of remarked in an interview, "COP16." "The institutional and financial framework that would enable us to accomplish it is not yet in place." On October 29, 2024, Susana Muhamad talks at the COP16 meeting in Cali, Colombia. 
Citing worries over new government appointees, Muhamad resigned from Colombian President Gustavo Petro's cabinet earlier this month. A spokesman for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity secretariat said she will remain president of COP16 until the end of the Rome negotiations. Governments around the world are looking to the private sector to help close the $200 billion annual funding gap for nature as budgets are under strain. However, financial institutions have emphasized that they are unable to solve nature loss and will not do so without lucrative prospects and unambiguous government instructions. The Institute of International Finance, the global trade association for private finance, declared in a January statement that the idea that private financial institutions "can directly and materially influence nature-positive economic outcomes" is a "unproven premise." Following the collapse of the Cali negotiations, Muhamad and her team spent November and December seeking out potential areas of agreement from regional negotiating parties. In an attempt to secure high-level political backing, she has since met one-on-one with ministers, she added. She did not specify which ministers she intends to attend, but she stated that she believes "at least a group" of those ministers will show up in Rome. Maria Angélica Ikeda, the head of Brazil's delegation in Rome, stated, "We need to see a more open door" from industrialized nations. "We are prepared to make changes, but we require guarantees that a fund specifically for biodiversity will be established."