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TWN
Info Service on Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Apr22/01) Fraught negotiations at resumed in-person CBD meetings London, 5 April (Lim Li Ching) – As exhausted delegates headed home following a gruelling two-and-a-half weeks of intense negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Geneva, a number of looming questions remain. These are: Has enough progress been made to salvage the fledgling post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF)? Are key differences between developed and developing countries insurmountable? And will the issue of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources upend everything? The GBF is being negotiated under the CBD and is meant to set the global agenda for biodiversity until 2030. Following a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the resumed meetings of the CBD’s subsidiary bodies, including the Working Group under which the GBF negotiations are convened, were held in parallel in Geneva from 14 to 29 March 2022. The first part of these meetings was held in virtual mode last year. Entrenched positions, the lack of trust and time to negotiate, and persistent differences between developed and developing country Parties meant that the progress for these first in-person meetings of the CBD since the pandemic hit was slow going. One highlight during the meeting was a joint statement made by a “like-minded group of developing countries on biodiversity and development” including the African Group, and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Venezuela. The joint statement, delivered on the last day of the meeting, called for equity as key to effective international cooperation for the implementation of the Convention and its Protocols and the achievement of the GBF’s mission, goals and targets. From virtual to in-person meetings The resumed meetings followed difficult virtual discussions in 2021. On-line meetings of the 24th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-24) and the 3rd meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-3) in May and June 2021 respectively were held in order to “make progress” on the GBF. A number of scientific, technical and implementation issues relating to the GBF had to be considered sequentially first by the subsidiary bodies, in order to inform the further negotiations of the GBF. A virtual 3rd meeting of the Open- Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (OEWG-3) was then held in August 2021. Many CSOs (see ‘Open letter on virtual negotiations under the CBD’, 9 April 2021) and developing country Parties, the African region in particular (see ‘Africa calls out inequitable virtual negotiations on biodiversity’, 2 June 2021), had protested against the convening of formal virtual negotiations as inequitable for numerous reasons. In addition, the inability to foster good regional coordination and to effectively interact with other Parties only served to widen the gaps and harden positions. The limited time also meant that many issues and documents could not even be discussed, and the work had to be deferred to a resumed in-person meeting (See ‘Biodiversity talks stymied by inequities in virtual negotiations’, 16 June 2021). Hence the virtual meetings in 2021 only set the scene for discussions, with no decisions taken, and these were left to the resumed meetings in Geneva. However, in Geneva, it became apparent that the lack of trust and the widening gulf between Parties’ positions were difficult to bridge, even with face-to-face negotiations. In addition, this was the first time Parties were purportedly allowed to negotiate with each other on the GBF, rather than with the Co-Chairs of the process. Initially only two meetings of the OEWG had been envisaged, and a third meeting was added on. Now, an additional fourth meeting of the Working Group (OEWG-4) will be held in Nairobi from 21 to 26 June, in order to work further on the two critical issues that it has been tasked to negotiate – the post-2020 GBF and DSI. OEWG-4 will be instrumental in preparing the ground for the adoption of the GBF and the hoped-for “solution” to the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the utilization of DSI, at the second part of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15), which is scheduled for the third quarter of 2022 in Kunming, China. [The first part of COP 15 was held virtually in October 2021 and did not see any substantive negotiations. It was a largely formal and procedural opening of the meeting, and the Presidency of the COP was handed over from Egypt to China.] Text-based negotiations? The previous meetings of the OEWG had merely collected and compiled the views of Parties, an exercise that has been repeated several times. The resumed OEWG-3 meeting was actually the first time that Parties were purportedly able to negotiate the text of the GBF. The zero draft, updated zero draft and the first draft of the GBF had all been produced by the Co-Chairs of the process – Basile van Havre from Canada and Francis Ogwal from Uganda (See ‘The post-2020 global biodiversity framework: Taking stock and some key issues’, 20 November 2021). At the first Contact Group sessions in Geneva addressing the different goals and targets, frustration again mounted, as rather than getting down to the business of negotiating text, the Co-leads of the four Contact Groups on the goals and targets instead posed questions for Parties to answer. Some of the questions were based on those the Co-Chairs had posed in their “reflections” in the run up to the Geneva meeting. However, there were also new questions posed to the Parties, which created confusion and frustration, as these were not the questions for which they had prepared answers. (The “reflections” provided the Co-Chairs’ assessment of where the consensus and divergences among Parties seem to lie, and also included some text proposals.) Therefore, at Geneva, progress in the GBF Contact Groups was agonizingly slow, with non-papers by the Co-leads attempting to streamline text, and Parties merely reaffirming their positions and adding more text back in, seeking to delete or amend text, and putting virtually everything in brackets. No real text-based negotiations occurred, and it is hoped that the OEWG-4 meeting in Nairobi may finally allow for this necessary step to achieve consensus. The outcomes of the work of the GBF Contact Groups will now be forwarded to OEWG-4 and includes elements that were not discussed in Geneva due to lack of time. It is hoped that the OEWG-4 meeting in Nairobi may finally allow for the necessary step to achieving consensus – having real text-based negotiations among the Parties. Having kept a close rein on the text until now, with this likely contributing to perpetuate the lack of progress, the Co-Chairs in the closing plenary finally asserted, “this draft is not ours anymore, it is yours”. Monitoring framework of GBF The draft COP 15 decision adopting the GBF envisages that the GBF will be adopted together with a monitoring framework with headline indicators for assessing progress. Negotiations on the monitoring framework occurred under SBSTTA-24, but again, there were frustrations, as expressed by Brazil: “How can we negotiate indicators for goals and targets that have not been agreed on yet?” The negotiations therefore saw an exercise of Parties safeguarding their positions by proposing a slew of indicators for goals and targets that are not necessarily reflected yet in the GBF. While there has also been substantial work by the CBD Secretariat and other technical agencies to compile proposed indicators, a “traffic light” system was developed for Parties to indicate whether they thought the proposed indicators are relevant, feasible and readily available. Much work remains to be done to reconcile all this information. The draft recommendation adopted at SBSTTA-24 on this issue calls for further intersessional work on the proposed indicators of the monitoring framework, including a compilation of comments, and a scientific and technical review through the organization of an expert workshop. A related SBSTTA-24 recommendation on the scientific and technical information to support the review of the updated goals and targets, and related indicators and baselines of the GBF, remains fully bracketed indicating no consensus. This includes an Annex containing the terms of reference for an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Indicators for the post-2020 GBF. Resource mobilization, or lack thereof Meanwhile, under the SBI-3 agenda, other key issues relating to the GBF were discussed, including on planning, monitoring, reporting and review; the updated action plan on subnational governments, cities and other local authorities; the strategy for resource mobilization; the long-term strategic framework for capacity-building and development; the gender plan of action; the communications strategy; the long-term approach and action plan for mainstreaming; and cooperation with other conventions and international organizations. While some progress was made on these agenda items, many issues were still not resolved, leaving a host of contentious issues in brackets for the COP to deal with. The issue of equity in terms of providing for the fair sharing of the burden of actions and provision of the means of implementation continued to dog the discussions on resource mobilization, and on the options to enhance planning, reporting and review mechanisms, with clear North-South divides. On the one hand, a lot is being asked from developing country Parties that hold most of the world’s biodiversity, to meet the goals and targets of the GBF, which as yet do not adequately address the root causes of biodiversity loss and degradation, such as overconsumption in the rich world. They are also held accountable for these actions through the monitoring framework and the planning, reporting and review mechanisms. There is great pressure to adopt these as a package at COP 15, with proposals for ratcheting up ambition over the GBF period. On the other hand, developed country Parties, which have legally binding obligations under Article 20 of the Convention to provide new and additional financial resources to enable developing country Parties to meet their obligations for implementation, including on onerous obligations for planning, reporting and review, stonewalled the discussions in several ways. Text referring to Article 20 and the means of implementation remains bracketed in both the documents on resource mobilization and on planning, reporting and review. In the resource mobilization discussion, two options for adopting the successor to the current strategy for resource mobilization remain on the table – either to adopt it at COP 15, in parallel with the GBF, and operationalize it, or to adopt the GBF first and then revise the resource mobilization strategy at COP 16. The latter proposal by a developed country Party was because “we care so much about resource mobilization, that is why we want to take time to develop the strategy”. This was viewed by many developing countries and observers as hypocritical, given that the developed country Parties are putting pressure for the GBF and its accountability mechanisms to be adopted at COP 15, but seem to be happy to delay providing the necessary financial resources to support developing country Parties. A developing country regional grouping made clear at the Contact Group discussions on resource mobilization that it would “only agree to the GBF targets if there are resources attached to them”. Joint statement by the like-minded group of developing countries The joint statement delivered by a “like-minded group of developing countries on biodiversity and development” was in part a response to the impasse on these important means of implementation issues. The group includes the African Group, and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Venezuela. The statement was delivered by Gabon at the closing plenary of OEWG-3, which was followed by a statement of support “in principle” by China, which hoped that all Parties could uphold the concerns regarding the means of implementation, and support developing country Parties in their implementation of the CBD. The like-minded group called for the GBF’s mission, goals and targets, reporting framework, and the necessary means of implementation to enable action, to be adopted together in a holistic manner as a package at COP15. It also called on developed country Parties to commit to a goal of mobilizing and providing at least USD100 billion annually initially and rising to USD700 billion annually by 2030 and beyond, under draft Target 19 of the GBF. This must be new and additional to, and separate and distinct from, the financing that developed countries are committed to provide under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement as well as under official development assistance. At the first part of COP 15 in October 2021, China announced that it was setting up a biodiversity fund of 1.5 billion yuan (around USD 236 million) to support developing countries and welcomed contributions from other Parties. The like-minded group also proposed a more robust and effective financial mechanism to complement existing financial support arrangements such as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). This mechanism should include agreement on the establishment of a new Global Biodiversity Fund to complement the GEF for the pooling and disbursement of biodiversity-related financing under Article 20 to support the implementation of the GBF up to 2030 and beyond. Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), for example, to support and enhance the implementation of its climate finance-related provisions, the Green Climate Fund was set up in 2012 as a new operating entity for the UNFCCC’s Financial Mechanism. This is additional to the GEF, through which climate finance from developed countries could be channeled to support developing countries to take action on climate change under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement. In addition, the like-minded group called for the mechanism for reporting, review and planning to include modalities for the reporting by developed country Parties of information on the biodiversity finance and other support that they are committing, and have provided, to developing country Parties. This draws on the reporting framework under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement which requires developed country Parties to report not only on their climate actions but also the climate finance and other support (such as technology transfer) that they are providing to developing countries. Digital sequence information (DSI) Another contentious issue that has a major bearing on the GBF is on DSI. The African Group has, since COP 14 in 2018, made clear that it would only agree to the GBF if a solution is found for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the utilization of DSI. Anything less would undermine the third objective of the CBD, as the advancements in genome sequencing technologies means that access to DSI may circumvent current benefit sharing arrangements. [The three objectives of the CBD are the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.] At the Geneva meeting, following two sessions of the Contact Group on DSI, which saw continued disagreement and a reiteration of entrenched positions, most of the substantive discussion then occurred in a Friends of the Co-leads grouping. When the text was brought back to a third session of the Contact Group at 3am on 28 March, Parties were urged to quickly agree and adopt the compromise as a package, to be sent to the OEWG-3 plenary without further discussion. At
the final OEWG-3 plenary on the last day of the meeting, delegates
awaited the moment with bated breath. The compromise package entailed
a balance of placing clean text of purportedly agreed elements into
the OEWG-3 recommendation, while leaving the most contentious issues
fully bracketed in the Annex containing the recommended decision for
COP15. Proceedings were then suspended for the Parties to thrash out a compromise in informal talks. Because a recommendation adopted by the OEWG cannot have bracketed text, and compromise text could not be agreed, the following text was included in the report of the meeting: “This recommendation is intended to facilitate the further process on DSI issues and does not prejudge the definition and the views on the parameters and the principles governing a final solution.” [A forthcoming article will provide more detail on the DSI negotiations and related issues.] As the final plenary of OEWG-3 then drew to a close in overtime, the final documents were adopted with the draft of the post-2020 GBF full of unresolved text options, alternatives and square brackets, leaving much hanging on OEWG-4 in Nairobi. Likewise, the closing plenaries of SBSTTA-24 and SBI-3, which were held in the preceding days, saw many recommendations adopted with numerous brackets, and even some with whole documents in brackets. This leaves COP 15 with the unenviable task of resolving all these issues. More intersessional work between now and COP 15 is envisaged for various issues, including for DSI, the GBF monitoring framework, resource mobilization, and planning, reporting and review mechanisms. Not to mention an additional OEWG meeting now scheduled to try and progress the GBF and DSI negotiations further. After the long, hard slog of the Geneva meetings, there appears to be much more work still to be done. +
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