The international community has failed to meet its objective of reducing the dramatic loss in biodiversity by 2010. According to the latest Global Biodiversity Outlook, environmental deterioration is fast approaching a "tipping point" beyond which irreversible damage and the collapse of entire ecosystems could occur — with disastrous consequences for all life on earth. It is hoped that the International Year of Biodiversity will provide the impetus to change this trend. One important step forward was taken in June, when representatives from 90 countries approved establishment of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), IPBES’s function is to provide decision-makers with independent and credible information on the status of biodiversity and to translate scientific inputs into workable action plans. The UN General Assembly will discuss the formal establishment of this body at its high-level panel in September.



The UN panel will also serve as the run-up to another milestone: the Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be held in Nagoya, Japan in October. The delegates will need to take stock of the implementation of the CBD and agree on a concrete political roadmap for protecting biodiversity. Areas of dispute centre around the creation of a network of protected areas and the negotiation of a regime on genetic resources. The disputes are along known lines: while the industrial countries are keen on promoting protected areas, developing countries are apprehensive about interference in their sovereignty over land use. These countries would like the negotiations to focus on regulating access to genetic resources and fair participation in the profits from their utilization. The industrial nations, on the other hand, fear that this may put their pharmaceutical industry’s R&D at a disadvantage. Whether these hurdles can be overcome or not will have a decisive bearing on whether 2010 becomes a point of no return for nature conservation. (Christiane Roettger)



More information on the high-level meeting of the General Assembly to be convened on 22 September 2010 as a contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity is available at http://www.un.org/ga/65/meetings/biodiversity.shtml



The background paper can be downloaded here.



For the website of the IPBES, please visit http://ipbes.net/

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, August 2010