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BIODIVERSITY: Progress at a ‘Multilateral Pace’

Mario Osava and Haider Rizvi

CURITIBA, Brazil, Apr 1 2006 (IPS) - “That is the multilateral pace,” remarked a Brazilian diplomat in response to complaints that the decisions reached at the global biodiversity conference basically postponed concrete actions that environmentalists see as urgently needed in order to save life on earth.

The most complex and important resolution adopted by the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8), which ended Friday in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, states that the working group designing an international regime to regulate fair and equitable benefit-sharing of biological resources is to submit its proposal before 2010.

That is a major stride forward on an issue that has been frozen since the Convention was adopted 14 years ago, said Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment.

In addition, she pointed out, another 30 decisions were reached at the Mar. 20-31 conference, involving all of the major issues, a few new ones, and controversial questions like sterile seeds produced using Terminator technology, and transgenic trees.

The Convention gained a new status at this month’s conference, and Brazil reassumed its role as a leader on environmental questions, but at a “higher level” than during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s deputy minister of the environment Claudio Langone said in an interview with IPS.

More than 4,000 people took part in the COP8 debates and official negotiations, and another 6,000 participated in workshops, seminars and protests by social organisations. The conference was also attended by more than 100 ministers, compared to a mere 16 at COP7 in Malaysia, which drew just 2,600 participants in 2004, noted the executive secretary of the Convention, Ahmed Djoghlaf.

Further, 236 parallel events, in which civil society organisations participated heavily, where held in Curitiba over the past two weeks. By contrast, the Climate Change Conference – which generally draws greater attention – held four months ago in Montreal was accompanied by 150 parallel events, said Langone.

Although a decision is to be reached on the global regime on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing (ABS) by 2010, the resolution adopted at the conference stipulates that the proposal must ready as soon as possible. And Brazil, which is presiding over the process until COP9, scheduled for 2008 in Germany, will be in a position to speed up the negotiations, he added.

Besides, the negotiations are not starting out from scratch, but are based on a draft agreement hammered out by the working group on ABS two months ago in Granada, Spain, Langone pointed out.

Although objections to the proposal have been raised, especially by the European Union, because of the large number of bracketed items (indicating unresolved discrepancies), it serves as a “reference point” to allow the negotiations to move forward, he said.

But it was the slow pace made by most of the decisions taken at the COP8, involving the creation of working groups and task forces to discuss one issue or another, that was criticised by environmentalists, social movements and indigenous associations. Greenpeace International went so far as to describe the conference as “a major failure” because it did not adopt urgently needed measures to fight biopiracy and environmental destruction.

In 2002, the parties to the Convention recognised that urgency, and set a series of targets involving the expansion of land and marine protected areas in order to significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010. But very little has been done towards that end so far, with only a few countries having put into effect the promised action plans, environmentalists complain.

Moreover, little progress has been made to overcome a key weakness: the lack of financing to meet the agreed-upon goals.

Despite their overall upbeat mood, both Silva and Djoghlaf appeared frustrated on the question of funding. “We are trying intensely to negotiate with those who can help,” said the Brazilian minister.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), which is jointly run by the World Bank, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), expects to have just three billion dollars over the next four years to distribute among countries that are in dire need of recovering from biodiversity losses.

The urgency is heightened by the race against free trade agreements.

There is “antagonism” between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the “imposition of a neoliberal economic agenda” by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the expense of natural resources, according to the Brazilian Forum of Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Social Movements for Environment and Development.

Many environmentalists see the Convention as an instrument for opposing the new rules on trade and patents that threaten biodiversity by subjecting everything, including life itself, to market criteria.

The Convention is a strategic mechanism for indigenous peoples, as “the natural route for confronting the WTO,” Brazilian activist Marcos Terena, coordinator of the indigenous representatives participating in COP8, told IPS.

But the divisions among civil society organisations have diminished their chances of having an influence on the global biodiversity conferences.

For example, the global small farmers’ movement Vía Campesina and many NGOs are opposed to benefit-sharing, arguing that it would amount to the “commodification” of biological resources and traditional knowledge, a common heritage of humanity.

National sovereignty over natural resources – which is recognised by the Convention – is the principle upon which many governments base their rejection of the full participation in the question of benefit-sharing demanded by indigenous communities.

The very nature of international conventions, in which everything must be decided by consensus, stands in the way of faster progress.

Reaching a consensus on issues that have an economic impact, like ABS, is extremely difficult. The geopolitics of biodiversity basically pits the industrialised countries – the owners of technology, especially biotechnology – against the developing world, where the planet’s biological resources are concentrated.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand stood out during COP8 for their obstruction of a number of resolutions. Environmentalists accused them of serving as “puppets” for the United States, which is not a party to the Convention, and for the biotech industry.

For example, some issues were debated for up to 17 hours, only to end in vague recommendations, like the need to intensify research.

But although the progress made has been slow, it is real. Uruguay, sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, is one example. Environmental questions, which received little attention until 1992, have taken on growing significance since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, said Alicia Torres, national director of the environment and the country’s chief negotiator at COP8.

Since 1999, Uruguay, whose resolutions were “isolated and lacked a global vision,” has had a National Strategy on Biodiversity, as well as laws for complying with the targets set by the Convention, she told IPS.