Biodiversity Conference Hijacked

Corporate influence continues to prevent action

by Anne Petermann, GJEP (from December 2010 edition of Z Magazine)

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) tenth Conference of the Parties (COP-10) took place from October 5-29. This, the International Year of Biodiversity, was the year by which the UN CBD had tasked itself with achieving a set of "Millennium Development Goal" (MDG) targets to stave off biodiversity loss. These targets were wildly missed.
 
According to Ahmed Djoghlaf, the pro-business executive secretary of the CBD, "The three big outcomes of the COP-10 meeting in Nagoya" were to be "a global agreement on a new [strategic plan to halt biodiversity loss], the mobilisation of the finance needed to make it happen and a new legally-binding protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS)." He concluded, "The decisions we take now will affect biodiversity for the coming millennium."
 
Months before the launch of these talks, the Guardian (UK) wrote, "[COP-10 is] on course to make the farcical climate talks in Copenhagen look like a roaring success. The big international meeting in October, which is meant to protect the world's biodiversity, is destined to be an even greater failure than last year's attempt to protect the world's atmosphere. Already the UN has conceded that the targets for safeguarding wild species and wild places in 2010 have been missed: comprehensively and tragically."

To read the entire article, go to: http://www.zcommunications.org/biodiversity-conference-hijacked-by-anne-petermann