Governments Also Agree
Strategic 10 Year-Plan with Targets and
Timetables to Combat Loss of Planet's Nature-Based
Resources
Nagoya, 29 October 2010-After close to 20
years of discussion and debate, governments
from across the globe today agreed to a
new treaty to manage the world's economically-central
genetic resources in a far fairer and more
systematic way.
The approval, to establish
an International Regime on Access and Benefit
Sharing of Genetic Resources (ABS), came
on the last day of the convention on biological
diversity meeting taking place in Nagoya,
Japan.
The treaty, a Protocol
to the main convention, lays down basic
ground rules on how nations cooperate in
obtaining genetic resources from animals
to plants and fungi.
It also outlines how
the benefits, arising for example when a
plant's genetics are turned into a commercial
product such as a pharmaceutical, are shared
with the countries and communities who have
conserved and managed that resource often
for millennia.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) which administers
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD),
said: "This is a day to celebrate in
terms of a new and innovative response to
the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems.
And a day to celebrate in terms of opportunities
for lives and livelihoods in terms of overcoming
poverty and delivering sustainable development".
"It is also an
important moment for the United Nations
and the ability of countries to put aside
the narrow differences that all too often
divide in favour of the broader, shared
issues that can unite peoples and nations.
I would like to congratulate all governments
concerned for bringing a fresh vision to
the more intelligent management of life
on Earth," he added.
The new Nagoya Protocol
on ABS lays out rules on how derivatives—substances
and compounds derived from genetic resources-
will be dealt with under an ABS regime.
It also addresses the
issue of traditional knowledge and pathogens—for
example how developed countries may in emergency
situations obtain a flu virus in order to
develop a vaccine to counter a possible
epidemic.
The Protocol also says
governments should begin considering ways
of recompensing developing countries for
genetic material that may have been collected
years, decades even centuries ago- if in
future they become used to produce say a
new pharmaceutical or crop variety.
One option may be to
put a proportion of any profits arising
into a special fund to be used by developing
countries in order, for example, to build
conservation or scientific capacity.
Strategic Plan
Governments also adopted
a new strategic plan including targets for
addressing biodiversity loss to be met b
y 2020.
For example, governments
agreed to increase the extent of land-based
protected areas and national parks to 17
per cent of the Earth's surface up from
around 12.5 per cent now, and to extend
marine protected areas to 10 per cent, up
from under one per cent currently.
Other elements of the
extensive plan include, by 2020, lifting
the extinction risk from known threatened
species.
The meeting agreed to
study resource mobilization for assisting
developing countries to meet the new targets
in the plan based on a methodology that
relates support to needs and gaps.
Other decisions included
taking a 'precautionary approach' in terms
of emerging areas such as geo-engineering
in order to combat climate change and the
development of synthetic biofuels.
Mr. Steiner said the
two-week meeting, building on 10 months
of the UN's International Year of Biodiversity,
had also delivered a sea change in the global
understanding of the multi-trillion dollar
importance of biodiversity and forests,
freshwaters and other ecosystems to the
global economy and to national economies,
and in particular for the "GDP of the
poor".
The case has been built
via The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
(TEEB), an initiative hosted by UNEP, requested
by G8 environment ministers as well as developing
country ones and supported by governments
including Germany, Norway and the United
Kingdom.
In Nagoya the final,
global TEEB report was launched as countries
including Brazil and India announced they
would be launching their own national TEEB
studies.
A parallel and supporting
partnership was also announced by the World
Bank in collaboration with organizations
including UNEP to 'green' national accounts
in order to mainstream 'natural capital'
within national economic and development
plans.
The project is initially
set to be implemented in between six and
10 countries including Colombia and Mexico.
"Conservation and
the sustainable use of biodiversity need
catalytic, strategic, serious and targeted
investments from the public sector that
reflects also the links between biodiversity
and for example climate change. But ultimately
the billions—if not hundreds of billions-
required will only come when public policies
and incentives are aligned with nature in
a way that unleashes private sector investments".
"This perhaps is
the ultimate litmus test with natural capital
given equal standing with human and financial
capital. Indeed history may show that this
may be the real success and legacy of 2010
and of the Nagoya meeting," he added.
"Nagoya has certainly
set new benchmarks upon which the nations
of the world will be judged by their citizens.
This time round these targets need to be
an inspirational and drivers of fundamental
change towards a sustainable, Green Economy
for the many and not just the few,"
said Mr. Steiner.
"I would like to
thank and congratulate Ryu Matsumoto, the
Minister of Environment of Japan and his
team, for their hospitality but above all
their determination, leadership and skill
in navigating nations to this positive and
potentially transformational conclusion,"
he added.
