I spent eight days in Cali, Colombia in October 2024 covering my first UN Convention on Biological Diversity summit. I left before the final day, but as this story illustrates, it ended up not being the final day.

Delegates left the hardest work for last — specific strategies by which nations and non-government actors could reach $200 billion annually in finance to protect nature and stave off deforestation and species extinctions. They ran out of time. Delegates fled to catch flights at the Cali airport. And the COP16 president, Susana Muhamad, was forced to close the biennial meeting prematurely.

Delegates did agree to meet for three days in February in Rome (Feb. 25-27) to complete their work. And they did. As best they can. My story overviews what they accomplished and the difficulty they will have in reaching their ambitious and critically important goal. Alas, I reported from home in North Carolina, not from Rome, my favorite city in the world.