UN Negotiators Reach Biodiversity Agreement

In the closing hours of the U.N. conference on biodiversity, negotiators agreed to expand protected land and marine habitats in an effort to slow extinction rates across the planet.

Delegates on Saturday approved a target to protect 17% of the world’s land areas and 10% of oceans by 2020 (up from 12.5% and 1% respectively).

In addition, a new treaty will manage the world’s economically-central genetic resources in a far fairer and more systematic way. Called the International Regime on Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources (ABS), it lays down basic ground
rules on how nations cooperate in obtaining genetic resources from
animals to plants and fungi.

It also outlines how the benefits, arising for example when a plant’s genetics are turned into a commercial product such as a pharmaceutical, are shared with the countries and communities who have conserved and managed that resource.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) which administers the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), said: "This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems. And a day to celebrate in terms of opportunities for lives and livelihoods in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering sustainable development."

Steiner said the two-week meeting, building on 10 months of the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity, had also delivered a sea change in the global understanding of the multi-trillion dollar importance of biodiversity and forests, freshwaters and other ecosystems to the global economy and to national economies, and in particular for the "GDP of the poor".

The case has been built via The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), an initiative hosted by UNEP, requested by G8 environment ministers as well as developing country ones and supported by the European Commission and governments including Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom.

In Nagoya the final, global TEEB report was launched as countries including Brazil and India announced they would be launching their own national TEEB studies.

A parallel and supporting partnership was also announced by the World Bank in collaboration with organizations including UNEP to ‘green’ national accounts in order to mainstream ‘natural capital’ within national economic and development plans.

The project is initially set to be implemented in between six and 10 countries including Colombia and Mexico.

"This perhaps is the ultimate litmus test with natural capital given equal standing with human and financial capital. Indeed history may show that this may be the real success and legacy of 2010 and of the Nagoya meeting," Steiner added.

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