Policy Note · Capital Markets & Real Assets · Policy & Regulation

Biodiversity finance gets a payment mechanism, not yet a market

COP16 in Cali created the first structured claim on revenue from genetic sequence data for biodiversity conservation. Whether it becomes real capital flow depends on participation nobody can yet compel.

November 2024 · Latin America & Caribbean

Retrospective analysis of November 2024. Published August 2026.

Mountain landscape of the Farallones near Cali, Colombia

COP16, the UN biodiversity conference, ran in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November 2024, the first time the talks were held in the Amazon region. Parties adopted the Cali Fund, a mechanism requiring companies that commercially use digital sequence information, genetic data drawn from plants, animals, and microorganisms, to contribute a share of their profits or revenue toward biodiversity conservation, with half of any proceeds directed to Indigenous Peoples and local communities. What the conference did not resolve was broader and harder: talks on a dedicated global biodiversity fund under COP governance stalled over developed and developing country disagreement on structure and control, pushing that question to a reconvened session in Rome in February 2025. Pledges to the interim Global Biodiversity Framework Fund reached only about $407 million in Cali, well short of what negotiators had sought.

The Signal

COP16 in Cali adopted the Cali Fund, a digital sequence information benefit sharing mechanism with a 50 percent allocation to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, while broader global biodiversity fund negotiations stalled and were pushed to Rome in February 2025.

Why It Matters

The Cali Fund is a payment obligation with a defined beneficiary, not yet a market with defined supply and demand. Its practical value depends entirely on which companies actually contribute, since participation is not compulsory in the way a tax or a regulated fee would be, and on how contribution is verified once companies do.

The System Connection

Biodiversity finance sits next to, but is not the same instrument as, the carbon markets already active in land backed structures, and the two are increasingly discussed by the same institutional buyers evaluating the same land.

What We Are Watching

  • Corporate contribution volume to the Cali Fund once it begins operating.
  • Whether the reconvened Rome session in February 2025 resolves global biodiversity fund governance.
  • Whether verification standards for DSI linked biodiversity outcomes converge with existing carbon market methodologies or diverge into a separate discipline.
Sources reviewed
Last checked August 2026
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