COP10.org

The fourteenth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) convened at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya, from 10-21 May 2010. More than 700 participants attended the meeting, representing governments, UN agencies, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, indigenous and local community groups, public sector research, academia and business. The conclave ended with major conflicts and only minor progress indicating a challenging agenda for Nagoya's COP10 negotiators.

For a full wrap-up report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, click here.

For NGO commentary from the CBD Alliance, click here. For related news reports, see below...

Nairobi skyline via Wikipedia

Disagreements remain over biodiversity

Koichi Yasuda
Yomiuri Shimbun
May. 30, 2010

NAIROBI--A preparatory meeting in Nairobi for an upcoming U.N. conference on biological diversity closed Friday after failing to resolve most of the disagreements over a strategic plan to stem the loss of plant and animal species.

The 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held in Nagoya in October. The key issue on its agenda will be the new strategic plan, meant to replace the current one that expires in 2010.

Although the preparatory meeting adopted a draft agreement on the plan, unresolved issues remained concerning 11 of the 20 targets for protecting biodiversity to be included in the plan.

Conference chair Japan will doubtless struggle to secure agreements on the different targets.

A serious confrontation took place in Nairobi between the European Union and developing nations, including Brazil, over the plan's overall mission. The EU proposed that the world should "take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020," while the developing nations said countries should take action "towards halting" the biodiversity loss.

The preparatory meeting decided to suspend the issue by recording both sides' opinions. One of the 11 targets left pending concerns the establishment of protected areas of land and sea. An initial plan stated a target of 15 percent of the world's land and world's oceans, but participating nations failed to reach a consensus after China wanted the target figure for the sea removed.

In contrast, several other nations said it should be raised to 20 percent.

The nations also failed to reach an agreement on whether to increase tenfold the human resources and financing for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Brazil brackets entire draft Strategic Plan in Nairobi

By Negotiation Tracker
undercovercop.org
May 28, 2010

The entire text of the draft Strategic Plan – the  vision, mission and targets -  was just bracketed (Friday afternoon) in the Plenary – by Brazil, supported by Malawi (speaking on behalf of Africa Group), China, Mexico (on behalf of Grulac), and also by Cuba.

The message from the countries of the Global South is clear: until the Global North lives up to its’ commitment to a legally binding and effective Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) protocol, and to its commitments under Article 20 and Article 21 (part of which reads, “the developed country Parties shall provide new and additional financial resources to enable developing country Parties to meet the agreed full incremental costs to them of implementing measures which fulfill the obligations of this Convention”), we cannot achieve the three objectives of the Convention.

Brazil later on gave a statement on behalf of the Like Minded Mega Diverse Countries, where he said (paraphrasing) “attempting to enhance efforts to halt biodiversity loss without dealing with the chronic lack of resources is an enterprise doomed from the start”.

The battle lines for the COP are already drawn: the Strategic Plan, ABS and financial resources. Some kind of compromise in all three of these, ‘the package’ will be the task at hand. Whew! To Nagoya.