I was not able to go to 10th Conference of the Convention on Biodiversity,CBD/COP10, in Nagoya , the first COP I’ve missed since 1996, but have been following its proceedings closely online and kept ukabc.org/cop10.htm up to date. We were jointly responsible for the CSO position on Agricultural Biodiversity that was presented at the COP. The Conference came to a close after a lengthy 3 weeks of negotiations at 2:59am last Saturday morning. The Independent had high profile front page coverage later that morning.
The results of the Nagoya negotiations underscore the value to all of us of this multilateral Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for sustaining life on Earth, even if the results were less than we had hoped and caused significant concern among many delegates from Africa And Latin America, especially Bolivia*. See ENB report of CBD/COP10 www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb09544e.pdf
The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and the 20 voluntary Aichi Targets**, the most publicised results of the conference, may halt the decline in biodiversity and its ecosystem functions by 2020 but other decisions could have more immediate impact.
- Governments also agreed the Nagoya/Kuala Lumpur supplementary Protocol which makes corporations and others liable for any damage caused by the international spread of GMOs.
- They agreed in the agricultural biodiversity decision to build on the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) which would ensure global food production becomes more ecological, productive and biodiverse.
- They also banned any public or private geoengineering projects, experiments and adventurism intended to manipulate the planetary thermostat: the Royal Society and its partners should now be obliged to cancel its Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative and put its weight behind the CBD process, recognising the collective decision of 192 governments that it is the CBD which should govern geoengineering policy.
The UK government / DEFRA, a strong supporter of the CBD ensure its policies and programmes also reinforce ALL these vital multilateral decisions and reduce its commitment to funding more REDD projects***.
All in all the outputs from Nagoya are many times better than those that have been and are likely to be achieved in other multilateral forums including: the global conference in The Hague this week on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change, about which many CSOs have expressed concern including Practical Action and about 100 others from across the world; and the climate change conference, UNFCCC/COP 16, in Cancun in December, which will agree nothing of particular use for changing behaviours of the mega-polluters, unless things change dramatically.
The stakes are high and much could yet be achieved if the challenge of biodiversity conservation and development, realised to some extent in Nagoya, is explicitly added to what Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said in his Guardian Blog on World Food Day about climate change and agricultural development being tackled in tandem: “We can improve the resilience of agriculture to climate change by combining diverse crops on the same farm, by planting more trees, and by developing water harvesting techniques to moisture the soil. The classic “green revolution” approaches should be fundamentally rethought to achieve this. Agriculture, now part of the problem of climate change, should be made part of the solution.”
CBD Blog
More on ukabc.org/cop10.htm
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* Despite the hype, there were very strong concerns expressed by several governments, especially from Latin America, that the new ‘innovative funding mechanisms’ that have been agreed may not deliver significant benefits to local communities; that they are thinly veiled licences to commodify and privatise nature; and that these mechanisms will also be linked to carbon trading in the frame of the climate change convention. Bolivia did the right thing in the final plenary and got good text into a crucial decision expressing concerns about ‘innovative financing mechanisms’ and against TEEB, a precious UK-supported project that will increase pressure to commodify and privatise nature; and Bolivia also managed to include the first reference in a formal UN decision to the energetic and purposeful Cochabamaba World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. See ENB report of CBD/COP10 www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb09544e.pdf
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** The Aichi Targets include one on genetic diversity: “By 2020, the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity;”
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*** Below is the official statement from the UK minister. Others can unpick the language better than me but beware the “£100m for international forestry projects”… The money comes from the new international climate finance included in the Comprehensive Spending Review, which will include new money for the UK’s contribution to REDD+ … Many fear REDD will increase the commodification of forest carbon and is unlikely to reduce the exploitation and destruction of forests and their biodiversity, see, for example, Friends of the Earth International’s December 2009 publication REDD Myths.
UK: Statement From Environment Secretary- New Agreement Reached In Nagoya
Source: Department For Environment Food And Rural Affairs
Published Monday, 1 November, 2010 – 03:53
www.egovmonitor.com/node/39226
Caroline Spelman today welcomed the new agreement reached in Nagoya for setting targets to protect the natural environment.
Caroline Spelman said:
“These have been long and hard negotiations, but we have successfully achieved a new global plan to help protect our natural environment. We have also agreed an historic protocol which has been 18 years in the making, establishing a regime where developing countries will allow access to their genetic and natural resources in return for a share of the benefits for their use.
“The new agreement states we will take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of habitats and species in order to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is resilient and can continue to provide the essential services that we would otherwise take for granted. This will secure the planet’s variety of life, our well being and help eradicate poverty.
“We have also secured an agreement to link climate change, global poverty and biodiversity together in protecting the world’s forests, which is essential if we are to achieve our aims in these areas. This was a key objective for the UK and this week I announced £100 million specifically to fund biodiversity projects in forest regions.
“I and my colleagues from other EU member states have learnt the tough lessons from other negotiations and worked tirelessly at this conference to find common ground amongst nations so that this agreement can be reached.
“We will now take this binding framework forward and put the key elements into effect in the Natural Environment White Paper to be published in spring 2011.”
