UN biodiversity preservation talks end without deal on financing The world's biggest nature conservation conference closed in Colombia on Saturday with no agreement on a roadmap to ramp up funding for species protection. With other successes under its belt, the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was suspended by its president Susana Muhamad as negotiations ran almost 12 hours longer than planned and delegates started leaving to catch flights.