Developing countries push for double financial package to conserve biodiversity
Developing countries are pushing for a double of a financial package agreed earlier in Nagoya, Japan to protect biodiversity at the on-going 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Until the first day of the High Level Segment (HLS), developing countries, especially the African Group, expressed concerns about the developed countries not agreeing to a legally binding commitment to provide new and additional financial resources to implement the CBD.
A central issue is the adoption of targets for resource mobilization as part of the review of the implementation of the resource mobilization strategy that was adopted in 2008.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, Dr Paul Matiku, spokesperson for the African Group, said the mood of the Western World had changed from negative to a positive representing their readiness to discuss the key issue of providing funds to developing countries to protect biodiversity.
Asked why developing countries need financial commitments to enable them to conserve biodiversity, he said the Western Countries were the most beneficiaries of biodiversity whiles African countries suffered most.
He said African nations had made a considerable committed towards biodiversity preservation in a way of putting in place structures such as ministries of environment as well as ‘walking the talk’.
“Africans countries continue to conserve wild animals that often destroy farmer’s crops. We also grow forest that do not only produce oxygen for all human kind but also its leaves, bark, and the roots are used to produce medicine by the developed countries and sold back to us,” he explained.
Dr Matiku said the financial commitment, when approved, would be used to reduce poverty, strengthening institutions that are mandated to protect biodiversity and also pay compensation to farmers whose crops would be destroyed by wild animals.
At the last biennial COP Meeting in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, three major decisions were adopted as a package: the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing, the Revised and Updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (2011-2020) with 20 targets (the Aichi Biodiversity Targets), and the implementation plan for the Strategy for Resource Mobilization in support of the achievement of the CBD objectives.
One of the most heated and longest negotiations in Nagoya centred on the mobilization of financial resources.
The Philippines on behalf of the G77 and China, Brazil, Bolivia and Kenya strongly represented the interests of developing countries.
They insisted in particular on specific targets for financial flows on the basis of the commitment of developed countries to provide new and additional finance for agreed full incremental costs under Article 20 of the CBD.
There was no agreement to establish specific targets even though the G77 and China had proposed specific figures with time lines.
The European Union proposed instead to develop a methodology for assessing needs. Parties finally agreed to apply the methodology during 2011-2012 to measure gaps and needs as well as progress in the increase in, and mobilization of, resources against the adopted 15 indicators, most of which were proposed by developing countries.
It was agreed that COP 11 will adopt targets on resource mobilization provided that “robust baselines and an effective reporting framework” are adopted.
Source: GNA