Countries have agreed at the resumed COP16 talks in Rome to a strategy for “mobilising” at least $200bn per year by 2030 to help developing countries conserve biodiversity.

Nations also agreed for the first time to a “permanent arrangement” for providing biodiversity finance to developing nations, “future-proofing” the flow of funds past 2030.

Faced with a highly unstable geopolitical landscape and a previous set of talks that ended in disarray in Colombia, countries forged a path to consensus on a set of texts in what many nations celebrated as a win for multilateralism in uncertain times.

The agreement on finance comes despite the world’s largest biodiversity donor – the US, which has never been a formal party within these talks – recently deciding to withdraw most of its nature funding in a foreign-aid freeze under Donald Trump.

Many European countries who signed onto the agreement have also recently cut their aid budgets.

Nations also agreed on two texts for tracking their progress towards achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

The GBF is a landmark deal first made in 2022 aiming to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

Colombian politician and COP16 president Susana Muhamad received a lengthy standing ovation for her role in guiding parties to consensus in the early hours of Friday morning in Rome.

But, amid celebrations, some countries cautioned that a vast amount of progress will be needed to have a chance of halting and reversing biodiversity loss in just five years.

Some three-quarters of nations have still not submitted their UN biodiversity plans for how they will achieve the targets of the GBF – four months after the deadline.

And a recent investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted UN biodiversity plans do not commit to the GBF’s flagship target of protecting 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030.