By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 5 1996 (IPS)

The 162 signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity must stop talking and begin to act, say participants in the Third Conference of the Parties meeting in the capital of Argentina.

Not only meetings, reports and pamphlets are needed, but also funds to put the Convention’s recommendations and accords — designed to promote the preservation and sustainable use of natural resources and the sharing of profits derived from their use — into practice.

In different words and a variety of languages, that is the message most frequently repeated by the representatives of governments, international bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) meeting Nov. 4-15 in Buenos Aires.

Conference participants stress the need for funding — to determine which species are in need of protection, preserve fragile ecosystems, and foment the sustainable use of resources in countries of the developing South.

Tuesday’s discussions centred on the financial mechanisms required to implement the projects stipulated in the accords reached in the framework of the Convention.

When the Convention emerged out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) was accepted as its financial mechanism, in spite of resistance from a number of developing nations and NGOs.

GEF was to function as a temporary mechanism. But the first two conferences of the parties lengthened the interim period, and a memorandum of understanding is being studied in Buenos Aires to do the same.

A majority of Latin American and Asian nations support the proposal, although they plan to suggest modifications such as cutting the extension to a maximum of one year. But in Africa, voices that reject the initiative outnumber those in favour.

A member of the Ethiopian delegation told IPS that the Convention should have its own or regional bank-based financing mechanisms. But he added that “the industrialised countries insist on keeping GEF, which has demonstrated insensitivity to the problems of the developing world.”

Guinea’s director of the environment, Toure Idiatou Camara, concurred with that view — “GEF is not good for Africa. Its conditions are very strict” — and proposed the creation of a multilateral fund for the Convention.

GEF is a joint World Bank, U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) body which manages a fund of some two billion dollars.

But Arsenio Rodriguez, UNEP director for Latin America, told IPS that “the financial weight of the World Bank is enormous compared to that of the other parts.” Moreover, governments have different representatives in each of the three bodies, and the three officials do not always see eye to eye.

“UNEP is a guarantee of credibility,” Rodriguez added. “But it is the governments which must reach agreement and demand that GEF take their priorities into account.”

Many delegates from the South complain that GEF is not subordinated to the needs of the countries, but that it funds projects according to its own agenda, which is more focused on conservation than the sustainable use of resources.

“This is a serious and unsolvable problem,” Argentina’s director of natural resources, Carlos Merenson, told IPS. “Without a financial mechanism, there is no way we can make progress in concrete issues.”

For example, Merenson said GEF planned to grant 40 million dollars to Argentina for the creation of protected areas, even though it was not one of the country’s top concerns.

“For our country and for the Conference of the Parties, it would probably be better if GEF financed a strategy for the sustainable use of forests, so the private sector could take advantage of them. But if we ask for money for subsidies, they will reject the project because it is not one of their priorities.”

In October, delegations from Asian countries meeting in Malaysia agreed that “the authority of the Conference of the Parties over the financial mechanism should be categorically established by the memorandum of understanding,” which should explicitly stipulate the mechanism’s interim character.

Latin American, Asian and African signatories also underline that putting into practice the Convention’s third objective — access to technology for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and the transfer of such technology from the industrialised North to the South — requires databases with information on technology for using natural resources.

Inherent in the third objective is the fact that biological diversity is concentrated in the southern hemisphere, and technology in the countries of the North.

Asian nations stress that such mechanisms must not only provide for information sharing as up to now, but also for technology transfer, the creation of mixed societies and the development of human resources in nations of the South.

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