BIODIVERSITY: Conference Ends with Important Accords

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 15 1996 (IPS) - The Third Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity ended here Friday with the approval of accords on sustainable agriculture and project funding.

But less progress was made on the questions of technology transfer, intellectual property rights regarding genetic resources and indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge, in spite of pressure from developing nations and indigenous communities.

The executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Calestous Juma, told IPS that the conference made “significant progress towards the implementation of the Convention in key areas such as agro-biodiversity and forests,” while giving rise to a call to governments to act.

The aims of the Convention, born at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and ratified by 162 countries, are the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, which is concentrated in the developing South, and the equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources.

The Convention is unprecedented insofar as it was not imposed, but rather negotiated between countries of the South and industrialised nations, rich in technology and capital.

The challenge of the conference, which began to meet two weeks ago, was to begin to put the Convention into practice.

Argentine delegate Raul Estrada, who had participated in the negotiations that gave rise to the Convention, expressed his satisfaction with the advances made by the conference in terms of agriculture and financing.

“Argentina offered to host the conference because it is an essentially agricultural country, and agriculture was the chief issue on the agenda of this third meeting,” Estrada told IPS. “A decent document was drawn up” which promotes the exercise of sustainable agriculture, he added.

Juma stressed that the conference recognised the importance of collaboration between the Convention and other international bodies, such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Trade Organisation, and other conventions such as the one on Climatic Change.

Estrada also underlined the significance of the accords on funding for projects on biodiversity.

The conference approved three documents on that question that up to the last minute continued to spark hot debate among the signatories, and even threatened to hold up the closing ceremony: financing mechanisms, project guidelines and evaluation mechanisms.

The main document is a memorandum of understanding that will regulate the relationship between the Convention and its interim financing mechanism, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), with precise guidelines on how it is to orient its credit.

“GEF was used to doing what it saw fit, rather than what was needed,” Estrada contended.

“Progress was also made on the definition of specific orientations for GEF,” as well as in agriculture, an area for which a “very defined and precise” document was approved, Costa Rican delegate Manuel Dengo, speaking in the name of the Group of 77 (developing nations) and China, told IPS.

That document stipulates programmes for the promotion of sustainable agriculture, and gives priority to financing for a list of specific issues. It calls for government measures and programmes for controlling agriculture’s impact on biodiversity, as well as information and education programmes.

The document also urges governments to foment the development of technologies and practices designed to increase productivity without degrading resources, such as organic agriculture, and calls on them to promote alternatives to pesticides.

Juma said a consensus was reached on the “complex issues” of technology transfer and intellectual property rights, which are to be dealt with in the context of the areas of implementation of the CoCastro’s statement was designed as an alert to stimulate progress in the discussions: “the alliance is not as strong as we would like, but the industrialised nations demonstrated greater interest in matters important to us.”

The governments abing a technology is of little use in opening a factory; what is needed is increasingly close collaboration with the private sector.”

At the beginning of this week’s ministerial segment of the conference, the representative of the Group of 77, Costa Rican Environment Minister Rene Castro, termed the Convention’s North- South alliance “fragile” due to the failure of industrialised nations to deliver on their promises for technology transfer and funding.

But on Friday, Dengo said Castro’s statement was designed as an alert to stimulate progress in the discussions: “the alliance is not as strong as we would like, but the industrialised nations demonstrated greater interest in matters important to us.”

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