Baltic and European news
Big steps forward at biodiversity talks in Bonn
2553, 30/05/08
The European commission has hailed "landmark" decisions to protect global diversity taken by world environment ministers at a meeting of the UN's biodiversity convention in Bonn on Friday (EED 28/05/08 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/25515). Delegates made "far reaching" progress on marine biodiversity protection and a regime on access to genetic resources and sharing their benefits.
Consensus was also reached on decisions paving the way to sustainable biofuel production and to ensure concerns relating to biodiversity and forests are taken up in ongoing international climate change talks.
"Today we have reached a milestone in protecting our biodiversity by finally putting our commitments into concrete actions," EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said.
"We have achieved as much as we wanted and could achieve in Bonn," said German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel. "We reached consensus on the most controversial questions and overcame the stalemate of recent years."
Member governments of the biodiversity convention adopted scientific criteria to identify marine areas that need protection and agreed to start work on identifying these areas. The goal is to establish a global network of marine protected areas by 2012. Delegates also agreed to provide guidance to assess the environmental impacts of activities undertaken in the high seas.
A detailed roadmap was adopted with a view to finalising negotiations on an international framework on access to genetic resources and the "fair and equitable" sharing of benefits from their use at the next convention meeting in 2010.
By then delegates also want to have established an international scientific platform for biodiversity to mirror the Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). An important input to this will be a study on the economic impacts of biodiversity loss, whose preliminary results were presented in Bonn on Thursday. A final report is due in 2009.
Mr Dimas and Mr Gabriel commissioned the study following a call at a meeting of environment minsters from the world's top economies last year for the value of biodiversity to be calculated (EED 16/03/07 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/22841). The study could have a similar galvanising effect on policymakers as that produced by a report on climate policy by economist Nicholas Stern (EED 30/11/06 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/21951).
The world is currently losing E50bn annually in ecosystem services from land-based biodiversity, study author Pavan Sukhdev of Deutsche Bank concluded. By 2050, 11 per cent of the natural areas remaining in 2000 could be lost due to expanding agriculture, infrastructure and climate change.
"Urgent remedial action is essential because species loss and ecosystem degradation are inextricably linked to human well-being," Mr Sukhdev says. The poor are the hardest hit by biodiversity loss.
Thirty-four international companies committed themselves to making biodiversity conservation an important element of their corporate policies in Bonn on Thursday as part of a "Business and Biodiversity" initiative launched by Mr Gabriel last year. The German government has pledged to increase its funding of international nature protection initiatives to E500m annually by 2012.
Follow-up: See UN biodiversity convention homepage http://www.cbd.int/, and press releases from the European commission
and German environment ministry http://www.bmu.de/english/current_press_releases/pm/41627.php, plus
biodiversity study http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/economics/pdf/teeb_report.pdf,
relevant European commission webpages http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/economics/index_en.htm,
and German environment ministry comment http://www.bmu.de/english/current_press_releases/pm/41609.php. See
press releases from Birdlife http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2008/05/cop9_bonn.html and WWF
http://www.endseuropedaily.com/docs/80530b.doc and German business and biodiversity initiative press release
http://www.bmu.de/english/current_press_releases/pm/41614.php plus
webpages http://www.bmu.de/english/nature/downloads/doc/40635.php.
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