ENVIRONMENT: Ministers Prepare Recommendations on Biodiversity

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 12 1996 (IPS) - Environment ministers from some 100 countries will gather here Wednesday to come up with recommendations on the conservation and sustainable use of the planet’s biological diversity, and the sharing of benefits derived from that use.

The meeting will be the ministerial segment of the Third Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which ends Friday with the signing of the “Buenos Aires Declaration”.

The Convention, which emerged from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, has been ratified by 162 countries. Its objectives are the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity — which is concentrated in the southern hemisphere — and the sharing of profits reaped from the use of genetic resources.

Developing nations, where 250,000 of the 270,000 known superior species of plants are found, demand the transfer of technology, development of human resources and project funding from the industrialised North in exchange for the regulated use of the South’s rich biological diversity.

The Convention also stipulates that the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities be respected and compensated, with regards to its practical medicinal applications, while recognising that the indigenous style of life is compatible with the conservation and sustainable use of diversity.

But during the Buenos Aires conference which opened on Nov. 4, it became clear that the countries of the South have been able to make little progress in implementing conservation projects, and even more limited advances in the sustainable use of biodiversity. Development objectives have lagged even further behind.

The Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Convention’s interim financing mechanism, stipulates that the signatory States must demonstrate progress in the implementation of profit-sharing mechanisms in order to obtain funding.

A majority of developing nations, especially from Africa, urged speedier action with respect to mechanisms for the transfer of information and technology, and financing without strings attached, subordinated only to the objectives laid out by the Convention.

Indigenous peoples, meeting in a parallel forum, protested that they have been left out of government decision-making, and rejected the possibility of others patenting their knowledge.

Two main currents took shape in the indigenous forum. Several groups called for the creation of a protocol to make the Convention’s recommendations on traditional knowledge effective, while others demanded that the Convention be suspended to keep it from becoming a tool for legitimising the “plundering of resources.”

GEF president Mohamed Al Ashry said his institution has authorised 422 million dollars in funding while mobilising a similar amount from other cooperation agencies and private firms, for projects that concentrate on conservation and sustainable use.

“The countries themselves must reach agreement on how to implement the Convention’s third objective, in order for us to execute their decisions through the financing of programmes,” Al Ashry said at the conference, in response to criticism from developing nations.

Following the 1992 Earth Summit, the signatory countries of the Convention met in Nassau in 1994 and Jakarta in 1995, where a commission was created to draw up a protocol on biosecurity focusing on the cross-border movement of modified live organisms, which is pending approval.

According to the signatories, biotechnology can make a substantial contribution to resolving environmental and development problems as long as it is “judiciously” applied — in the words of the U.N. Enviromment Programme.

The draft of the protocol on biosecurity, which has been analysed at length at the Buenos Aires conference, concentrates on controlling risks to the environment and human health posed by the cross-border movement of species transformed in laboratories. The protocol will be the first on a specific issue to promote and develop commitments established in the Convention.

Following its approval, it must be signed by the parties to the Convention. Some nations — such as Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia — have already come up with national legislation to control cross-border movement. Others lack a legislative framework for regulating the phenomenon, and private companies are free to act in complete disregard of risks.

The international environmental group Greenpeace warned during a non-governmental organisation forum held parallel to the conference that the genetic modification of plants and animal species poses “unpredictable” risks to humanity.

Greenpeace mentioned a company in Argentina that created a species of soy which is more tolerant of the pesticide that the firm itself sells. The species was modified through the introduction of genes from a bacteria, a virus and another plant. Oil, mayonnaise and other food produced with the new species, which could cause allergies, are not clearly labelled, according to the New England Journal of Medicine cited by Greenpeace.

Genetically-engineered species that receive genes from microorganisms have an “uncertain, unpredictable and impossible to prove” allergenic potential, the medical journal states.

Greenpeace is thus demanding a moratorium on releasing genetically modified organisms into the environment until the international protocol on biosecurity discussed at this month’s conference is signed and ratified by the parties to the Convention.

Latin American environment ministers agreed during their Nov. 11-12 regional forum on the need for prompt approval of the protocol. But experts predict that concrete results are unlikely to be seen before the next conference of the parties, set for May 4-15, 1998 in Montreal, Canada.