UN’s landmark nature restoration fund fails to raise almost any money

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day, reviewed by our editorial team. Read the full piece on POLITICO or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: The UN's Cali Fund, launched in February 2025 to channel corporate profits into nature conservation, has raised $6,000 from two contributors against a target of $1 billion a year
• The fund asks companies profiting from digital sequence information, genetic data drawn from plants and organisms used in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, to contribute 1% of annual profit or 0.1% of revenue, sums that would reach tens of millions for large multinationals

🔭 The context: The fund was announced as a milestone at COP16 in Cali in 2024 and is intended to help implement the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
• It launched without seed funding and has no dedicated outreach staff, operating through an interim secretariat housed at the CBD
• Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, acknowledged the slow start and said few countries have actively engaged their industries, naming Norway as an exception
• No money has been disbursed, with the fund's spokesperson stating the disbursement architecture is still being finalised

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: The Kunming-Montreal framework's targets for halting and reversing biodiversity loss depend on finance that has not materialised, leaving conservation projects in developing countries and payments to indigenous communities unfunded
• The failure exposes a structural problem in benefit-sharing: companies extract commercial value from genetic resources without any obligation to return a share to the ecosystems and communities that hold them. Voluntary contribution has produced $6,000 against $1 billion, a ratio that raises the question of whether biodiversity finance can work without a mandatory mechanism

⏭️ What's next: The next biodiversity COP takes place in Armenia next month, where Schomaker hopes for a snowball effect
• Companies are seeking clarity on scope and how contributions interact with national access-and-benefit-sharing rules
• Prozomix, one of the two contributors, says it is now asking companies it works with to contribute if they use public genetic data

💬 One quote: "The business sector is beginning to recognize essentially that you ignore nature at your peril and the peril is for your own bottom line" — Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary, UN Convention on Biological Diversity

📈 One stat: $6,000 raised against a $1 billion annual target — roughly 0.0006% of the goal.

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