After the tour to Berlin City for the Global Youth Biodiversity Conference on August 2012, youth activists from the GYBN was counting days for the action at High Level UN Meeting on Biodiversity - UNEP/CBD/COP/MOP....Unfortunately I was unable to attend this such a high profile discussion. The summary of the conference in attached below which is extracted from IISD ENB Bulletin.
The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held from 8-19 October 2012, in Hyderabad, India, following the sixth Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP/MOP 6). Approximately 6,000 delegates representing parties and other governments, UN agencies, intergovernmental, non-governmental, indigenous and local community organizations, academia and the private sector participated in the meeting.
CBD COP 11 adopted 33 decisions on a range of strategic, substantive, administrative, financial and budgetary issues. Among other issues, the meeting addressed: the status of the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing (ABS); implementation of the Strategic Plan 2011-2020 and progress towards the Aichi biodiversity targets; and implementation of the Strategy for Resource Mobilization. Deliberations also focused on: issues related to financial resources and the financial mechanism; cooperation, outreach and the UN Decade on Biodiversity; operations of the Convention; and administrative and budgetary matters. Delegates also addressed: ecosystem restoration; Article 8(j) (traditional knowledge); marine and coastal biodiversity; biodiversity and climate change; biodiversity and development; and several other ecosystem-related and cross-cutting issues.
The COP 11 high-level segment was held from 16-19 October 2012. A number of other meetings were held in parallel to COP 11, including the fair on experiences and best practices in communication, education and public awareness (CEPA), the Rio Conventions Pavilion, and the Cities’ Biodiversity Summit.
Following the impressive package adopted at COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan, COP 11 marked the move from policy-making to implementation. The meeting adopted a set of decisions on items ranging from ecosystem restoration and marine and coastal biodiversity to the Nagoya Protocol and customary sustainable use to set the groundwork for intense intersessional work with a focus on implementation at the national and local level. The meeting, however, will probably be remembered for its intense, down-to-the-wire negotiations on financial issues, including targets for implementation of the Strategy for Resource Mobilization, and the budget, with a compromise agreement reached in the early hours of Saturday, 20 October 2012. To tackle unfinished business from Nagoya, the agreement sets an interim target of doubling biodiversity-related international financial resource flows to developing countries by 2015, and at least maintaining this level until 2020. This is coupled with targets aiming to improve the robustness of baseline information as well as a preliminary reporting framework for monitoring resource mobilization. COP 12 will then review progress with a view to adopting the final target for resource mobilization.
The Summary and Analysis of this meeting is now available in PDF format at http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb09595e.pdf and in HTML format at
A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF COP 11
IMPLEMENTATION, IMPLEMENTATION, IMPLEMENTATION
Two years ago, COP 10 in Nagoya generated great expectations by adopting its celebrated “package” of decisions on a new Strategic Plan, the implementation of the Resource Mobilization Strategy and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing. Negotiated in the shadow of the failure to reach the 2010 biodiversity target, the package was expected to set the Convention on a renewed path towards enhanced and cohesive implementation. Against this background, COP 11 was not anticipated to bring about any “big-bang” developments comparable to those achieved in Nagoya, but rather lay the necessary groundwork to realize the promises made two years earlier. The new CBD Executive Secretary, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, clearly took this up by emphasizing that the post-2010 work is about three priorities: “implementation, implementation, implementation.”
What is becoming increasingly apparent, however, is that there can be no implementation without resource mobilization, as the G-77/China and Mexico made clear at the outset. Debates about budget and financial issues dominated the agenda in Hyderabad until the wee hours of Saturday morning, while significant substantive items had already been resolved, such as marine and climate change issues. Eventually, COP 11 produced a long and demanding list of continued and new tasks for the Convention, keeping expectations high even in times of economic crisis. This analysis examines the budget and resource mobilization negotiations as a necessary background to understanding other selected—and more technical—outcomes of COP 11, with a view to illustrating how successful implementation in the post-Nagoya era will depend on streamlining, prioritizing and monitoring.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
The difficulties encountered in negotiating the budget in times of economic recession did not take many by surprise. Delegates quickly realized that in a time of shrinking budgets, they will have to prioritize among the 140+ requests to the CBD Secretariat that were being accumulated in parallel substantive discussions at the COP. With proliferation of work under the Convention being a long-standing issue, some participants wondered, “Perhaps the ultimate push to streamlining will come from budget constraints?” Others, however, were concerned about having to sacrifice important activities in the name of economic efficiency. For example, recent activities of the Secretariat, most notably regional capacity-building workshops, have become greatly appreciated as effective, on-the-ground support for implementation that creates and strengthens much-needed regional expert networks. Nonetheless, due to budget constraints, these activities were included under the voluntary funds of the Convention. Developing countries were therefore keen to stress that COP 12 must find a firm place for regional workshops in the “core” budget to reflect their newly-found status of “core priority” activities of the Secretariat. Many were equally concerned about relying on voluntary funds to hold the next meeting of the Article 8(j) Working Group, but saw an unexpected ray of hope in the unprecedented offer by the African Group and India to contribute to its convening—the first time that developing countries have made such an offer in the history of the CBD!
The protracted negotiations on resource mobilization seemed less linked to global economic contingencies, than archetypal North-South debates as to whether the financial solidarity provisions under the CBD and, more generally, the Rio principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, are more than aspirational words when it comes down to monitoring implementation. In light of the ambitious Aichi targets and heightened attention to measuring actual progress on the ground in reducing biodiversity loss after the failure to meet the 2010 target, developing countries were expecting concrete and firm commitment from developed countries. They demanded that increased monitoring of their own performance under the Strategic Plan be paralleled by systematic tracking of developed countries’ financial contributions. Delegates, however, struggled with tackling the “unfinished business” from Nagoya of developing targets to assess financial flows, and even agreeing on an “interim target” and roadmap towards definite targets. Eventually, though, they agreed to double biodiversity-related resource flows by 2015, while at the same time putting forward a preliminary reporting framework to monitor resource mobilization and a roadmap for review of progress and potential adoption of a final target at COP 12. Arguably to avoid a domino effect of target-setting and monitoring of funding obligations in other multilateral environmental agreements, several donors emphasized in their statements the fact that this development is specific to the context of the CBD and of a preliminary nature.
COOPERATION FOR ECOSYSTEMS
Notwithstanding stalemates on finance and on respective responsibilities, COP 11 successfully dealt with an impressive amount of work on ecosystem-related issues, mainly through cooperation and streamlining with other international processes.
Many believed that the outcome on marine biodiversity represents progress. In the next two years the CBD will be particularly busy on several complex fronts, such as marine debris and ocean noise. More prominent in the negotiations, however, was the work on marine protected areas (MPAs). While the term MPAs has become a taboo in the Convention and almost never mentioned, given the ongoing negotiations under the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on this and other issues related to marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), an impressive amount of scientific work that goes under the guarded label of “description of ecologically and biologically significant marine areas” (EBSAs) has been carried out by the CBD and partner organizations at the regional level. This exercise has provided a critical scientific information basis for the policy and legal discussion on the establishment of MPAs in other competent fora. Although the final decision is convoluted and the COP did not “endorse” the reports describing areas that met EBSA criteria in two regions (Western South Pacific, and the Wider Caribbean and Western Mid-Atlantic), it nevertheless did “launch” the EBSA repository in which these reports will be officially located and their precious information shared with the UNGA and other competent international organizations. Together with the new guidelines on environmental impact assessments in marine areas, including ABNJ, which were also adopted at COP 11, the CBD is providing the scientific evidence needed to address two urgent topics on the agenda of the UNGA and its Working Group on marine biodiversity in ABNJ. Walking the tight rope of its narrowly-defined mandate—limited to “scientific and, where appropriate, technical” tasks—the CBD may thus bring some momentum to the snail-paced policy process in New York.
With regards to biodiversity and climate change, the COP managed to start carving the CBD “niche” on REDD+ by addressing its biodiversity-related aspects. When addressing voluntary guidance on REDD+ biodiversity-related safeguards, discussions started with distrust as a developing country pointed out that “voluntary” safeguards for REDD+ under the CBD could turn into conditionalities when applied by REDD+ donors on REDD+ host countries. Streamlining and fine-tuning the decision so it is aligned with the latest developments under the UNFCCC also took time. For example, delegates debated at length a proposal to develop indicators to monitor compliance by developing countries with REDD+ safeguards aimed to prevent negative impacts on biodiversity and ILCs. In that context, some developing countries repeated UNFCCC decisions as a mantra, saying that monitoring information systems are “country-driven” and that monitoring REDD+ activities and their impacts against the safeguards will have cost implications for REDD+ host countries that would not necessarily be compensated by the benefits of REDD+ activities. Notwithstanding protracted negotiations among countries with quite entrenched positions, most were relatively satisfied with the outcome. Firstly, it accurately reflects the developments that have arisen in the climate change regime, as was requested by developing countries that are keen to prevent the CBD from impinging on ongoing climate negotiations. Secondly, it outlines a “roadmap” authorizing the next CBD COP to consider a progress report on REDD+ safeguards that can hopefully feed into the subsequent climate COP, as hoped by some developed countries, and allow for further review at CBD COP 13. Indicators to monitor developing countries’ compliance with REDD+ safeguards, however, disappeared from the final outcome—sacrificed to reach compromise.
TECHNOLOGY CONUNDRUMS
Despite continuous squabbles about the procedure to include new and emerging issues on the SBSTTA agenda, the CBD has accrued an impressive record of timely tackling unprecedented technological threats to biodiversity. National delegations and NGOs alike consider the CBD the “only game in town” among MEAs in that respect. The Convention thus raised expectations as an open and lively forum to discuss practical applications of the contentious precautionary approach. Past COPs had to deal with it in the context of genetic use restriction technologies (GURTS), genetically modified trees and ocean fertilization.
Another textbook-case is geo-engineering. Many heralded the relevant outcome from COP 10 (“paragraph 8(w)”) as a moratorium, which led to placing the item firmly on the CBD agenda, albeit not necessarily in a permanent or exclusive way given certain countries’ concern that the CBD may not be “the best place.” The follow-up discussions in Hyderabad were still quite contentious and marred with divergent views as to the application of precaution due to the fine line between geo-engineering activities and research on the potential of geo-engineering to contribute to climate change mitigation. The COP 11 contact group also dealt, once again, with concerns about complementarity with ongoing work under the climate regime: so delegates agreed that the CBD would further follow-up on this issue “at the appropriate time,” i.e. after the release of the fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, due in 2015, that is set to address geo-engineering. In addition, discussions were complicated by intricate international law questions, such as the relevance and content of customary international law, revealing anxieties not only of parties but also non-parties. These discussions were held at the same time as the media published alarming reports on ocean fertilization activities in the Pacific Ocean as the “world’s biggest geo-engineering experiment violating UN rules,” and the investor behind the experiment was quoted as saying that any international moratoria is a “myth.” While COP 11 wording on geo-engineering is non-committal on the need for the development of a global regulatory and control mechanism, or on whether the CBD is the most appropriate forum to address this gap, the Convention still provides a forum that will monitor parties’ activities with respect to the “reaffirmed” paragraph 8(w), notwithstanding those countries that objected to calling it a moratorium because of the voluntary language of its chapeau.
Synthetic biology was another case in point. While the alarm bell had already rung at COP 10, NGOs and certain developing countries were hoping to set a moratorium at COP 11. Although they eventually compromised to urge parties to apply the precautionary approach, this came within a more restricted scope limited to the threat of “significant reduction or loss of biodiversity” posed by organisms, components and products resulting from synthetic biology. The compromise also came at the cost of reference to other relevant international norms, which many understood as a hint to the norms of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This raised concerns that WTO law may bring about a more restrictive interpretation of the precautionary approach. Some NGOs commented bitterly: “With geo-engineering, we did not win but at least we did not lose either. With synthetic biology, we lost.” Nevertheless, the issue remains on the agenda, allowing the Convention or potentially its Biosafety Protocol to continue discussions, follow developments and increase scientific understanding and common ground among parties.
EXIT MUSIC: STREAMLINING AND MONITORING
COP 11 was in many respects a transitional COP. It was an opportunity to prove commitment to the ambitious, post-Nagoya implementation roadmap, which emerged with difficulty due to the critical question of resource mobilization. COP 11 was also a time to take stock and plan. Parties paid particular attention to facilitating international cooperation from within the CBD’s “own niche” by providing specialist inputs into international negotiations on marine biodiversity and climate change issues going on in other fora.
Partly due to the current global economic situation and partly due to the need to keep up with the expectations created in Nagoya, a brave new world of agenda streamlining and systematic monitoring will characterize the Convention in the years ahead. Along these lines, COP 12 in South Korea will undertake a mid-term review of progress towards achieving the Aichi targets. In the face of the many demands being placed on the Convention—ranging from new scientific work on marine and coastal biodiversity, to continued work towards the entry into force of the Nagoya Protocol—this review may provide a golden opportunity to ensure that multi-faceted work of CBD leads to more than the mere sum of its parts.
