On the eve of the twenty-fifth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) he is concerned at the desperately slow progress seen in Montreal after three long days of technical negotiations.
The Open Ended Working Group 5 (OEWG-5) meeting, held December 3-5, brought together negotiators from around the world to try to come up with a draft of the clearer Global Biodiversity Framework and ready to lay the foundation for the negotiations being the crucial COP15, which is the only opportunity we have in this decade to reach an agreement capable of changing the course of biodiversity loss.
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Despite progress on critical goals to consolidate a rights-based approach within the framework, with a focus on the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and protecting environmentalists, negotiations stalled as they moved on to more technically complicated issues, such as the equitable distribution of resources Benefits from genetic sequences and the sectors classified as most harmful to nature.
“What we’re noticing is a repetition of firm positions with little yielding or convergence seeking. We can’t keep going in circles. If we don’t start simplifying the text, the world will lose the chance to reach an ambitious deal while nature continues to disappear. There is no sense of urgency in the trading rooms, which is deeply frustrating. It’s the very short-term mentality that got us into this mess,” said Lin Li, director of global policy and advocacy at WWF International.
“We need to see governments refocus their time and efforts on the most critical issues. We need clean and simple text for ministers when they arrive next week, not a jumble of garbled paragraphs. In addition to the increased leadership we are calling for from all countries, the role of the Chinese Presidency becomes even more important now that we are entering formal negotiations for the COP15, where decisions need to be made. We need to see more ambition, but to the point,” he added.
In the round of technical negotiations that took place in Nairobi, the Open Ended Working Group 4 (OEWG4) left 1800 items to be defined in the draft Global Framework for Biodiversity
After more than 50 hours of discussions and negotiations, the account is currently at around 1400 points.
1. The first draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework is formally the last full draft of that framework, as proposed by the Co-Chairs of the Open-Ended Working Group in July 2021.
2. Based on this first draft, the parties discussed the Global Framework in Open-Ended Working Groups 3 and 4. These discussions resulted in a document that accompanies the report of Open-Ended Working Group 4 (the 1800-point report). define).
3. This document, in turn, was used by a smaller informal advisory group in Canada in early October to produce a shorter text with fewer brackets.
During the Open-ended Working Group 5, the parties made the decision to submit both the Open-ended Working Group 4 report and the shorter text for negotiators to compare the two during COP15.
Key points recommended by WWF including:
WWF believes that in order to achieve an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework it is necessary that it includes:
● A mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, achieving a nature-friendly world (where nature is more abundant than today).
● The goal of conserving 30% of the world’s land and sea surface through a rights-based approach by 2030.
● A commitment to halve the global footprint of production and consumption by 2030.
● A comprehensive resource mobilization strategy to fund implementation of the framework.
● A robust delivery mechanism that provides for reviews and increases ambition and action over time, using the Paris Agreement as a benchmark, with agreed indicators to measure progress.
● A rights-based approach that recognizes the leadership, rights and knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities, and a ‘whole of society’ approach that allows for the participation of all sectors of society throughout the framework’s implementation.
● The incorporation of just and rights-based nature-based solutions together with ecosystem-based approaches to generate benefits for people and nature.
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