BIODIVERSITY: North-South Alliance in Crisis

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 13 1996 (IPS) - Developing countries termed international conferences on biodiversity a waste of effort Wednesday, if industrialised nations do not deliver on their promises to transfer financial resources and technology to the South.

Costa Rican Environment Minister Rene Castro spoke in the name of the bloc of developing nations at the opening of the ministerial phase of the Third Conference of the Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity being held in Buenos Aires.

“We feel discouraged, because four years after the Convention came into force, there are very few signs of progress,” said Castro, referring to the alliance between the developing South, rich in biological diversity, and industrialised countries, the owners of technology and financial resources.

The Convention, which emerged from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and the fair sharing of profits reaped from the use of genetic resources, through the transfer of technology and funds.

Castro spoke for the Group of 77 plus China, which gathers the nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia — except Japan — after an opening speech delivered by Argentina’s Environment Secretary, Maria Julia Alsogaray, president of the Third Conference.

Alsogaray said the analysis of the positive and negative aspects of the implementation of the Convention “is not only generating problems within several countries, but also between nations.” She called on the Conference participants “to work out their differences in order to be able to continue.”

Ireland’s Environment Minister Brendam Harleen also spoke on Wednesday, in the name of European Union countries. He acknowledged that the challenges and threats to biodiversity are greater today than when the Convention was born, and recognised the need for facilitating scientific and technical cooperation.

“We will do everything possible to meet the expectations of indigenous communities,” he added.

Castro noted that in order to comply with the objectives laid out by the Convention, developing nations need technology, infrastructure and funds for projects, in accordance with priorities set by each country.

He recognised the efforts of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) — the Convention’s interim financial mechanism — but stressed that “one of the main problems for applying the Convention is that the industrialised nations do not comply with clause 20.”

That clause states that industrialised signatories are to provide financial resources so developing Parties can fully cover the costs of applying measures to comply with the obligations contracted in the Convention.

The Convention further states that the extent to which the developing signatories effectively comply with the obligations contracted will depend on how closely developed nations fulfill their obligations with respect to the transfer of technology and financial resources.

“All of this is a useless, theoretical exercise if there are no new and additional resources from the industrialised nations, especially now that development aid is on the decline,” said Castro.

“The strong alliance between countries from the North and the South — proposed by the Convention for the fulfillment of its objectives — has not materialised,” he added. “It is an alliance so fragile that it is parenthetical.”

The question of intellectual property rights has been brought up at the Conference as an issue of interest to industrialised nations and their companies, said Castro, without the indigenous communities that possess traditional knowledge being taken into account, as stipulated by the Convention.

Speaking in the name of his African counterparts, the environment minister of the Central African Republic made an “urgent call” to international cooperation to stop the “hemorrhaging of biodiversity.” No one is exempt from an environmental disaster, he underlined, while calling on a collective effort to save biodiversity, “which is life itself.”