The fortnight-long conglomeration of over 180 countries, on which Rs. 80 crore has been spent by India, is set to deliver nine agreements to protect the world’s biodiversity with no funds likely to be available immediately. Negotiations at Hyderabad have moved at a snail’s pace on resource mobilization and financial mechanism to meet the Aichi targets for biodiversity with countries refusing to budge from their stated positions.
The working group on resource mobilization resumed its work on Thursday afternoon with regional consultation groups presenting a broad paper on the issue. The discussions are expected to continue till late in the night but experts don’t expect the working group to bridge the wide gap between the rich and the developing world.
The 11th conference was expected to simultaneously provide money for saving biodiversity and a financial mechanism to utilize the funds. The rich nations led by European Union, Japan and Canada had blocked any move towards consensus forcing India to look for a political declaration on Friday.
“The wording of the declaration is being worked out,” a government official said, admitting that it will not mention any commitment on the amount of finances. India is seeking a commitment from the developed world to double its funding for biodiversity protection by 2015 once the baseline for the funds required is finalised.
The African group has come up as a champion for the cause of biodiversity and the poor living in Africa saying that the developing world was doing its bit but the rich nations were walking away from their responsibility to pay for the cause.
Namibia strongly advocated the need for the developing world to specifically allocate money for meeting interim targets that have to be completed by 2020.
New Delhi
Biodiversity meet: agreements by set to be declared in Hyderabad
Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, October 18, 2012
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First Published: 19:16 IST(18/10/2012)
Last Updated: 19:20 IST(18/10/2012)
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The fortnight long conglomeration of over 180 countries on which Rs. 80 crore has been spent by India is set to deliver nine agreements to protect world’s biodiversity with no funds likely to be available immediately. Negotiations at Hyderabad have moved at a snail’s pace on resource mobilization and financial mechanism to meet the Aichi targets for biodiversity with countries refusing to budge from their stated positions.
The working group on resource mobilization resumed its work on Thursday afternoon with regional consultation groups presenting a broad paper on the issue. The discussions are expected to continue till late in the night but experts don’t expect the working group to bridge the wide gap between the rich and the developing world.
The 11th conference was expected to simultaneously provide money for saving biodiversity and a financial mechanism to utilize the funds. The rich nations led by European Union, Japan and Canada had blocked any move towards consensus forcing India to look for a political declaration on Friday.
“The wording of the declaration is being worked out,” a government official said, admitting that it will not mention any commitment on the amount of finances. India is seeking a commitment from the developed world to double its funding for biodiversity protection by 2015 once the baseline for the funds required is finalised.
The African group has come up as a champion for the cause of biodiversity and the poor living in Africa saying that the developing world was doing its bit but the rich nations were walking away from their responsibility to pay for the cause.
Namibia strongly advocated the need for the developing world to specifically allocate money for meeting interim targets that have to be completed by 2020.
India has so far not been able to clear the logjam and take the negotiations forward. “Expecting a positive result from the conference is too big a goal to achieve in Hyderabad,” said a negotiator from a developing country.
The working groups have so far delivered documents on guidelines for plant conservation, biofuels and biodiversity, incentive measures, marine ecosystem and taxonomy for consideration of the final plenary to start on Friday.
“There are only minor differences on these issues and I am confident that they would be adopted at the plenary,” said the official spokesperson for Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN body providing secretarial services for the conference.
Hindustan Times