Outcomes from inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit to be presented at COP30 – Pres. Ali

Guyana is gearing up to expand its green leadership on the global stage, directing the world’s attention to the conservation and protection of its biodiversity assets.

From July 23 to 25, 2025, Guyana will be hosting the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit. This premier event will bring together world leaders and key stakeholders to discuss biodiversity as an important element in the climate equation, with the intention of formulating policy and market mechanisms to support and safeguard these critical resources.

To this end, President Dr Irfaan Ali says that the outcome of the summit will be shared at major global forums to leverage comprehensive actions.

He noted that there will be a comprehensive paper compiled with the key findings and learnings from the three-day summit, as well as from any agreements inked with international partners, and that document will be presented at COP30, which will be held in neighbouring Brazil later this year.

“We want that document to find its way at COP. We’ve already discussed with Brazil having this attention being paid to the outcome of this [biodiversity] summit. We intend to send a full copy of the report of the summit and the papers that will emerge out of the summit to the United Nations, so that we can start the long journey of putting biodiversity on the agenda and at the top of the agenda,” President Ali noted during an appearance on the United for Biodiversity: The Alliance Podcast.

The Guyanese Leader pointed out that Guyana has already led the fight to have tropical forests placed on the agenda and is now taking on the international responsibility to expand this portfolio.

In this regard, Ali noted that Guyana has already demonstrated its leadership by keeping its rich biodiversity resources largely intact at a time when the world has lost more than 50% of these assets.

As such, he sounded the call for collective global actions to map out the policy and market mechanisms to support and safeguard the earth’s biodiversity resources.

“We have to look at what are the contributing factors to the loss of biodiversity, and how do we create an ecosystem to support, first of all, the audit, the valuation, the pricing mechanism, the market structure and the tools of getting that market. So, it is not really looking at, you know, at this as pledges and financing alone. It is creating a mechanism. It is creating a market-based mechanism that, I think, can sell itself; a market-based mechanism that we, as a global community, adopt, if we believe, as we should, that biodiversity is a key and critical issue,” he noted.

According to President Ali, if action is not taken now to find such a formula to protect and conserve the world’s biodiversity assets, which are crucial for balancing the planet, then there could be a serious crisis.

“We had all of these pledges at various COPs, and we saw nothing coming out of the pledges. So, I’m just weary and tired of the pledges. But here is where Guyana has shown that we go beyond pledges. We create a product, we create a mechanism, we create a formula, and through the LCDs (Low Carbon Development Strategy) – the carbon credits, we have demonstrated how we can make this work,” he explained.