UNEP's Achim Steiner and Pawan Sukhdev at COP 11. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 19 2012 (IPS)

 “With more than 60 percent of the world projected to be urban by 2030 why not prepare for it and build cities that include biodiversity preservation into planning?” asks Kobie Brand of ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability in Cape Town, South Africa.

The existence of ICLEI, an association of  the world’s cities that are committed to sustainable development, suggests that the value of greening urban centres is gaining ground. ICLEI’s  Cities Biodiversity Centre in Cape Town works closely with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Global urbanisation will have implications for biodiversity and ecosystems if current trends continue, with knockout effects on human health and development, according to a new report by the CBD that concluded its 11th Conference of Parties (COP 11) in this south Indian city on Friday.

‘The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook’ report released at COP 11 is the world’s first global analysis of how projected patterns of urban expansion would impact biodiversity and crucial ecosystems.

The report, drawing on contributions from 123 scientists worldwide, says that over 60 percent of land that is projected to become urban by 2030 is yet to be built. This, according to Prof. Thomas Elmqvist of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and scientific editor of the report, offers an opportunity for low-carbon, resource-efficient urban development.

“Cities need to learn how to better protect and enhance biodiversity, because rich biodiversity can exist in cities and is extremely critical to people’s health,” said Elmqvist.

Even backyard gardens harbour significant biodiversity. A study of 61 gardens in the city of Sheffield, Britain, found 4,000 species of invertebrates, 80 species of lichen and more than a thousand species of plants.

“City folks love nature but just take it for granted; they do not understand the importance of biodiversity; so in towns and cities we are encouraging and awarding people who are protecting biodiversity, including frogs,” Julia Hennlein, 21, told IPS. Hennlein, a student from Germany, attended COP 11 as part of a youth delegation.

“Cities are where innovation and governance tools are generated, so urban centres are in a better position to take the lead in biodiversity preservation,” said Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the CBD. “The way our cities are designed, the way people live in them and the policy decisions of local authorities will define, to a large extent, future global sustainability.”

Not everyone has a positive outlook on urbanisation and there are misgivings in India, host of COP 11.   

“Unless fundamental changes are made to the current development paradigm, urban areas will continue to see huge migration and India is an example,” Ashish Kothari, an internationally known Indian environmental activist, told IPS. “Very little is being done to regenerate villages and where this is done, migrants have returned home from the cities.”

Aarati Khosla, leading the World Wildlife Fund-India’s ‘Earth Hour City Challenge’ campaign in six Indian cities to promote energy efficient technology and renewable, told IPS: “Even small things, like efficient vehicle parking, need to be better managed to make urban centres sustainable.”

New Delhi, India’s capital, and Mumbai, the country’s main business hub, have been ranked 58 and 52 respectively among 95 cities worldwide by a U.N. Habitat report released this week. Poor environmental conditions and pollution are some of the major reasons for their low ranking.

India, experiencing massive urbanisation currently, expects its urban population to jump from the present 30 percent to 50 percent by 2044. India currently accounts for 11 percent of the world urban population, but this will grow to 15 percent by 2031 when 600 million Indians will be living in cities.

“Urbanisation in the present unsustainable avatar also has a major impact on rural areas, reshaping livelihoods, lifestyles, patterns of consumption and waste generation,” says Helene Roumani, coordinator for Local Action for Biodiversity  from Jerusalem attending the two-day Cities for Life Summit running parallel to the COP.

Urging local governments to understand better the role of ecosystem services in urban planning, Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, emphasises that large and small urban groups depend on ecosystem services for their food, water and health.

“With environment and development traded off against each other, one-third of the population could soon be living in water-stressed areas,” said Steiner at the release of ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Water and Wetlands’ report, an initiative of the Ramsar Convention Secretariat.

According to the report, the world lost half of its wetlands in the 20^th century.

“People, cities and blue space are closely connected,” Nick Davidson, deputy director-general of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, told IPS.

“Wetlands do not just manage pollution but promote better health in many ways and coastal cities in Asia are particularly under great pressure from livelihood demands,” Davidson said. “The marine coastal areas are being seen as a waste area and encroached into for various livelihood sources.

“Decision makers have a really hard choice to balance development and livelihood priorities with wetland health,” Davidson said.

Biodiversity activists with UNEP's Achim Steiner and Pavan Sukhdev. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

With negotiations to mobilise resources for preservation of biodiversity at a major United Nations conference going nowhere, the Group of 77 and China have hinted at  possible suspension of the ‘Aichi targets’  under the Nagoya Protocol.

Algeria, current G 77 chair, stressed in a statement at the 11^th Conference of Parties (COP 11) to the CBD, underway in this south Indian city, that developing countries had made significant commitments at COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan, on the expectation that financial resources would be forthcoming to meet the Aichi targets.

The Algerian statement hinted that unless COP 11 – which ends Friday after almost two weeks of fruitless negotiations – addresses the issue of resource mobilisation the gains at Nagoya would be negated and the momentum towards realising the Aichi targets lost.

G 77, a loose coalition of 77 developing countries, now expanded to 132, was founded in 1964 to promote the collective economic interests of members and create joint negotiating capacity at the U.N.

At stake now are the 20 Aichi targets aimed at halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, conserving 17 percent  terrestrial and inland water areas, 10 percent of marine and coastal areas, restoration of biodiversity by up to 15 percent with countries implementing national biodiversity strategies and action plans by 2015.

Resource mobilisation has been the most contentious area of negotiations at Hyderabad. Developing countries, home to rich biological diversity, are now doubtful that the promise of increasing financial resource flows from developed to developing countries by 2015 will materialise.

Developed countries are firm that a baseline is necessary to determine the sum that is already being spent and that needs to be increased. But developing countries are pushing for commitments on interim figures.

Experts say funding from diverse international and national sources, and across different policy areas, is required to secure the full range of economic and social benefits to be gained from meeting the Aichi targets.  

Public funding and private sector investment (still under debate),  innovative measures, incentives such as payments for ecosystem services, conservation agreements including with local communities, water fees, forest carbon offsets, and green fiscal policies are among possible sources.

A high-level ‘Global Assessment of Resources for Implementing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020’, sponsored by Britain and India and released at the COP 11, informs that addressing the drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem restoration, over the 2013 – 2020 period could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

“Whilst there are some big numbers in this report, our panel found that the greatest resource needs are around reducing the direct drivers of biodiversity loss – those which occur throughout our economies and societies,” said Pavan Sukhdev, an economist and goodwill ambassador of U.N. Environment Programme at the COP.

Sukhdev who is also chair of the Global Assessment of Resources (GAR) report said if the direct drivers of biodiversity are addressed, they will “deliver benefits, far beyond biodiversity, to human health, livelihoods, and sustainable development.”

Sukhdev said research is needed to “fully assess cross-benefits cutting across many areas” and noted that the “drivers that destroy biodiversity are multifarious, climate change being one of them.”

India, in a show of commitment to cutting biodiversity loss, had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledging 50 million dollars at COP 11 to strengthen technical, institutional and human capacity building in India, and to also help other developing countries.

India is one of the six countries, out of the 193 members of the CBD, to have ratified the Nagoya Protocol.

Clarity on how much funds would be necessary to globally implement the Aichi targets is yet to emerge at COP 11 with experts reluctant to quote numbers.

“It may be good not to look at numbers. The roadmap to achieving the Aichi targets is important. Setting interim targets would be more practical; we do not till now even know the entirety of biodiversity,” said M.F. Farooqui, a key official in India’s ministry of environment and forests.

“Two-thirds of the proposed outlay for the Aichi targets is in the form of investment. But in initial stages, estimates like this can only be approximations,” Sukhdev told IPS.

“Funding for biodiversity should not be seen as costs but as investment for future global well being,” Braulio Ferreira De Souza Dias, executive secretary of the CBD, commented while speaking with IPS.

The other view among experts is that more than financial investment, policy change is important for saving biodiversity.

“It is not true that funds will flow from the North to the South. This may be the catalyst but nationally designed policies will make all the difference,” said Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, a senior environmentalist from Costa Rica associated with the GAR report.

“Costa Rica tripled per capita income and doubled forest cover by investing in institutional transformation,” Rodriguez said. “The same policies that caused the problem in the first place cannot continue. There is an urgent need to understand the need for appropriate policy development.”

“Conservation of biodiversity also depends on redefining the relationship between economic progress, environmental sustainability and social equity,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.

Steinem was satisfied that countries were increasing their investments in biodiversity. “This is not an issue of one moment or nothing… resource mobilisation is supposed to be for accelerating these efforts.”

Farooqui said India is currently spending two billion dollars, directly and indirectly on biodiversity conservation, including tiger protection areas that concurrently conserve nature’s chain down to microbes.

“Large developing countries like India and Brazil are already investing enormously in preserving biodiversity,” André Aranha Correa do Lago, a senior official at Brazil’s ministry of external relations, told IPS.

“Other than the larger developing countries, there are those that need additional resources. I cannot imagine that developed countries do not take this into consideration,” Lago said. “India and Brazil too can do more if there are additional resources.”

“It (funding by developed nations) is not charity, it is a compelling rationale,” said Steinem. “You cannot leave Hyderabad without numbers.”

The United Nations 11^th Conference of the Parties  to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP 11 CBD), underway in this southern Indian city, is lost on where to garner the billions of dollars needed to implement the ‘Aichi targets,’ due to be met by 2020.

“Decisions made here will lay the foundation for achieving the Aichi targets,” said India’s minister for environment and president of COP 11,  Jayanthi Natarajan. “Expenditure on biodiversity needs to be looked at as investments that will reap benefits for us and our future generations,” she cajoled delegates at the start of the 11-day (Oct. 8-19) conference.

But the executive secretary of the CBD, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, admitted to IPS, prior to the opening on Monday, that finding the money to keep biodiversity issues at the centre of development was not going to be easy.

“All CBD nations, however, have agreed that to meet Aichi targets. We need to change existing structures,” Dias told IPS. “There is a need for other sectors, such as health, to be linked to the financing process. I don’t expect only environmental agencies to pay this bill.”

The Aichi targets, now standing at a steep and seemingly impossible gradient,  range from tackling awareness of biodiversity, loss of habitats, alien invasive species, sustainable use of fisheries, ecosystems and agriculture to access and benefit-sharing with indigenous and local communities.

More than 170 countries are represented at the Hyderabad deliberations on the CBD, begun at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and now with  193 parties ratifying.

CBD seeks to address all threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including threats to climate change, through scientific assessments, development of tools and transfer of technologies amongst other clauses.

The CBD’s Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety is a subsidiary agreement to protect biological diversity from potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. To date, 163 nations have ratified the Cartegena Protocol.

But the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol ­– that asked for commitments on access and benefit-sharing amongst local communities, and is principal to achieving the Aichi targets –  has only 17 ratifications against the 50 needed to make the protocol a legal commitment.

Disagreements over how genetic resources and traditional knowledge should be shared led to the 2010 Nagoya Protocol, which CBD members are pledged to incorporate into their national laws that govern biodiversity.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals separately call for “significant reduction” in biodiversity loss – but even these are likely to be missed.

Dias says new financial mechanisms will look at changing current funding that has destructive trade-offs for biodiversity, make efforts to make business more responsible and engage with the private sector. They will involve state and local governments in all nations.

Pavan Sukhdev, who chairs CBD’s new ‘High Level Panel on Global Assessment of Resources for implementing the Strategic Plan’ till 2020, says at least 70 percent of all finances required are investments rather than expenditure.

An amount of 130 billion dollars in 2013 will stretch to 430 billion dollars as resources needed by 2020 to achieve these targets, but over two-thirds of this will be investments while a third will be recurring maintenance expenditure, according to Sukhdev.

“Achieving one target will invariably have an impact on other targets as well. For instance, financing forest conservation will have a natural impact on the Aichi targets in water,” Sukhdev said.

The ‘Working Group 2’ here at the COP11 has had over 70 interventions from various countries, discussing ways and means to finance biodiversity conservation.

“We have inherited, from COP 10, the need for resource mobilisation as the most imperative of needs,” said Indian official delegate Hem Pande at the meeting. “We have to agree on some targets and commitments, or else we will be faced with collective failure.”

The European Union, while outlining its proactive stance on biodiversity conservation financing, reiterated the imperative to look at new sources of funding, not least from the ‘green economy’ sector.

The green economy, commonly associated with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), established by the G8 and developing country environment ministers, looks to take natural capital into account.

India is one of the first countries to start a TEEB programme within its environmental policies.

TEEB, however has been controversial among civil society sectors which say corporatisation of natural resources cannot be condoned, especially at the cost of local communities that conserve these resources.

The chairman of India’s National Biodiversity Authority, Balakrishna Pisupati, told IPS that  local communities should be involved in the TEEB process since most have innovative ways of earning livelihoods while conserving biodiversity.

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Oct 4 2012 (IPS)

The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 11 CBD) approaches amidst a hailstorm of public protest against the ‘tragedy of the commons’ – the rapid loss of biodiversity in forests, oceans and indigenous community farmlands.

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Credit: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal, Canada.

Ten thousand people are expected to attend the global event, which promotes the motto ‘Nature protects if she is protected’, scheduled to run from Oct. 8-19 in southern India’s information technology hub, Hyderabad.

During this time, 193 member countries will assess progress made in translating the Aichi Targets – adopted at the last COP CBD held in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010  – into revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Actions Plans, and discuss resource mobilisation strategies to implement them.

With so much at stake, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the Montreal-headquartered Convention on Biological Diversity, has a lot on his plate.

With three decades of combined experience in scientific training and extensive negotiation experience on biodiversity issues, Dias spoke with IPS correspondent Manipadma Jena about which issues CBD will push for and what he hopes can be achieved at the COP 11.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What are some of the reasons for governments’ inability to meet their commitments on containing rapid biodiversity loss?

A: The third Global Biodiversity Outlook in 2010 assessed that we were making little progress implementing the biodiversity agenda, and the main drivers of biodiversity loss were still going strong.

Country policies are still promoting land conversions, degrading ecosystems to enhance food – including from oceans – and energy production, in unsustainable ways. Climate change and ocean acidification have exacerbated the situation.

Although we see an increase in commitment from governments and civil society on the need to protect nature and enhance biodiversity conservation, we still see a mismatch between these commitments and (real) action.

Q: The most exploited areas, and also those witnessing the maximum loss of biodiversity, are the community commons. How can this be rectified?

A: Overfishing is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons and loss of biodiversity in the oceans is increasingly becoming more evident. One of the targets we agreed to in Nagoya is for countries to reform their economic instruments that negatively impact biodiversity and ecosystems.

Unsustainable fishing receives subsidies in most countries for fishing vessel fuels and also for shipbuilding. We need to remove subsidies, utilise those funds (for promoting alternate livelihoods for fishers, for instance) and also create temporary no-go areas, for depleted fish species to restock.

We know what needs to be done to change the current situation. Unfortunately, policies and economic instruments globally are still promoting ‘business as usual’ models that do not enable sustainability.

Q: Is it possible to devise a legal system that can protect traditional indigenous practices from the crippling impacts of intellectual property rights in globalised markets?

A: That is what we hope. After many years of very hard negotiation, the CBD was instrumental in arriving at the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefits-sharing in 2010, which introduced the concept of economic benefits-sharing with those who are the custodians of biodiversity, who are mostly indigenous communities from developing countries.

Before this, India, Brazil and Australia had put in place national rules for access and benefits-sharing that were against bio-piracy. The fact is that most companies in developed countries did not feel obliged to meet these requirements because there was no global rule in place.

Q: Where does the CBD stand in getting the required number of countries to ratify the Nagoya Protocol?

A: We need at least 50 countries of the 193 Parties to the CBD to ratify the Nagoya Protocol in order to acquire legal status. We have 92 signatures but only five countries have completed all formalities required to ratify the protocol, while we have information that 12 more will probably ratify by the end of this year. This will, however, only make for a third of all ratifications needed. I hope by COP 12 in 2014 we will have the rest.

Our emphasis currently is to promote awareness, capacity building and consultations with different global sectors such as health, agriculture and biotech, so that governments have all the information they need to ratify the protocol and promote necessary domestic changes.

Q: In the meantime, what other mechanisms can governments immediately adopt to halt the alarming rate of biodiversity loss, and protect local communities?

A: Another potential mechanism is the protected area. In many countries these are established and (overseen) by national governments. The CBD recognises that we could also have community-governed protected areas that are fully recognised and financially supported by national governments.

This is a desirable participatory process advancing the issue of socio-economic equity and has the win-win outcome of enhancing biodiversity conservation and the livelihoods of local communities.

Namibia has already executed 70 such formal ‘conservancy’ agreements with local communities. Bolivia, Australia, Brazil and Mexico, too, have success stories. At COP 11, CBD will launch a study summarising these positive experiences over a full day of discussion, (in an effort to encourage) countries to adopt the mechanism.

Q: What role do you see for women globally in the preservation of biodiversity?

A: Women, especially in indigenous communities, provision food in families, rear children and are the custodians of a traditional relationship with nature and of collective knowledge about food production systems. It is very important to ensure we can count on this knowledge for better management of biodiversity conservation by recognising (women’s) role and encouraging participation in decision-making.

(END)

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