A waiting game – crucial decisions needed in final days of the UN Biodiversity meeting
FAO calls for the agriculture and food sectors to be recognized for their fundamental role in ensuring the conservation, sustainable use, and restoration of biodiversity.
Geneva, Switzerland – Negotiations between the 196 Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are now well under way in Geneva and all eyes are set on decisions that need to be made before the third Meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework closes on Tuesday.
These decisions will be crucial in ensuring that there is solid draft of the Post-2020 Framework ready for negotiation and adoption at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Kunming, China, later this year.
The Framework, also described as the ‘Paris Agreement for biodiversity’, outlines an ambitious strategy to engage the world in protecting biodiversity and rebuilding a future where humankind is ‘living in harmony with nature’.
As an observer to the CBD, FAO is present at the Geneva meeting which is the first opportunity for in-person exchanges since Parties gathered in 2020 at FAO’s Headquarters in Rome for the second Meeting of the Open-ended Working Group.
Addressing the biodiversity crisis
The last two centuries have seen an alarming decline in biodiversity, the very basis of our agrifood systems. In agricultural ecosystems, maintenance of biological diversity is important both for food production and to conserve the ecological foundations necessary to sustain life and rural livelihoods.
A diversity of pollinators, including managed and wild pollinators, is for example important to increase the yields of many crops. Likewise, a vast reservoir of soil biodiversity supports multiple ecosystem functions including healthy food production, carbon sequestration and the regulation of clean water.
Biodiversity is essential for sustainable agrifood systems – but the relationship between biodiversity and agrifood systems is also reciprocal. Ensuring agriculture is sustainable and productive helps halt the conversion and fragmentation of forests and other natural ecosystems, which will in turn limit the spread of zoonotic diseases and future pandemics.
The recently adopted FAO ‘Global Framework for Action on Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture’ touches on the integrated management of crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture and the associated biodiversity that contributes to food and agricultural production.
“FAO’s Strategy on Mainstreaming Biodiversity across Agricultural Sectors as well as its Action Plan have been fundamental; they are a commitment to support Members’ requests to FAO regarding all kinds of work related to country action on biodiversity. If the right decisions are made in Geneva and Kunming, the Post-2020 Framework could further strengthen FAO’s Strategy,” said Frédéric Castell who is leading FAO’s work on biodiversity mainstreaming.
What’s taking so long?
The painstakingly slow decision-making process has led some negotiators to speculate that this may not be the last meeting before COP15.
Difficulties lie in the fact that the Convention on Biological Diversity needs to balance its three objectives: conservation, sustainable use of biodiversity and access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.
Developing countries are stressing that the third objective of the Convention has not yet received the attention it deserves, and that benefit sharing and financial flows for biodiversity conservation must increase.
The first draft of the Framework has 21 targets for urgent action before 2030. Most of the targets are closely related to FAO’s mandate, including some of the more challenging issues under discussion. Target 7 on reducing nutrient, pesticide and plastic pollution from agriculture and other sources, Targets 9 on the sustainable use of wild species, Target 10 on the sustainable use of biodiversity and Target 13 on access and benefit sharing, are subject to long discussions.
“For the global biodiversity framework to be truly global and truly universal it must incorporate and involve all the biodiversity-related conventions, especially given that FAO hosts two of these conventions,” said Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture from the talks in Geneva.
Mr Nnadozie highlighted the complexities of the debates describing the importance of reaching a decision on access to and the sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of digital sequence information (DSI) – data and information from genetic resources that are digitized and made available in data banks and digital depositories around the world.
“You cannot have healthy food without a healthy environment, and this still needs to be strengthened in the post-2020 draft,” explained Irene Hoffmann, Secretary of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
“We need to consider the complexity within agrifood systems, and the need to balance efficiency, productivity and resilience. Numerous debates arise when we start considering the immediate need for food security and nutrition for all, while transitioning away from unsustainable food production to protect the long-term health of our planet”.
There are high expectations for the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework that should replace the expired targets agreed in Aichi in 2010.
“Governments will have less than 8 years to meet targets that are still not agreed on, and this alone is concerning, more so considering that despite some progress, none of the Aichi targets were fully achieved by 2020,” said Frederic Castell speaking from Geneva at the end of week two.
“Time is really not on our side if the world wants to halt global biodiversity loss by 2030.”
While negotiators continue to work around the clock, there is still the opportunity that some significant breakthroughs can be made in the last few days before the meeting closes.
Further reading
UN Convention on Biological Diversity - Resumed sessions of SBSTTA-24, SBI-3 and WG2020-3
IISD Reporting - Coverage of the Geneva Biodiversity Conference