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TWN Info Service
on Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Jul22/03) Penang, 14 July (Lim Li Lin*) – The latest round of negotiations on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was marked by the absence of optimism to the start of a new chapter in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as tired delegates expressed their frustration and fears over the finalization of the GBF later this year. The Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) meeting was held in Nairobi, at the UN Environment headquarters, on 21-26 June 2022, nearly three years since it first met to negotiate the GBF. The GBF is meant to guide the implementation of the CBD over the next eight years, to 2030. It is widely acknowledged that effective implementation of the CBD has been hugely lacking in the decades since it entered into force. Recent scientific reports such as the Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have highlighted the biodiversity crisis and the urgent action required. Negotiations were launched in 2018 at the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP 14) to the CBD and the GBF was meant to be adopted at COP 15, scheduled for 2020 in Kunming, China. The COVID-19 pandemic upended these plans; four years and four working group meetings later, including an on-line session, the draft text of the GBF still remains largely unresolved, with multiple square brackets (indicating lack of consensus) and alternative text proposals. Concern is looming large for the work still ahead, with the limited time and opportunity left to resolve differences. Initially, only two, and then three, working group meetings were planned. The recent Nairobi meeting (OEWG 4) was added, after it became clear in Geneva earlier this year at the re-located and resumed in-person OEWG 3 meeting that more time was needed for Parties to negotiate (see ‘Fraught negotiations at resumed in-person CBD meetings’, 6 April 2022). A further working group meeting (OEWG 5) is now tentatively scheduled, subject to the availability of resources and a suitable venue, for up to three days preceding the second part of COP 15, which has finally been confirmed to be on 5-17 December in Montreal, Canada. This announcement was made during OEWG 4, after much delay and uncertainty over the last two years. Since 2020, COP 15 in Kunming has been re-scheduled multiple times, but no decision had been made to shift the venue from China. Montreal is the seat of the CBD Secretariat, and Canada will be the host of the meeting. However, China will continue in its role as the COP President, which brings with it the responsibilities of chairing and facilitating the multiple meetings including COP 15. The two COP-MOPs (Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties) to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (and its Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress) and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing will also meet concurrently with COP 15. In October 2021, a virtual first session of COP 15 was held. It was a largely formal and procedural opening of COP 15, and the Presidency of the COP was handed over from Egypt to China. There was a high-level segment, including adoption of the “Kunming Declaration”, and negotiations on the interim budget for the CBD Secretariat for 2022. At the resumed COP 15 in Montreal, an in-person High-Level Segment will be held. Because of the timing, OEWG 5 would therefore meet and conclude its work as far as possible in the preceding days before the COP. Any unresolved issues and text will be passed on to the COP to resolve. Further intersessional work required At the end of the Nairobi OEWG 4, the Co-Chair of the Working Group, Basile van Havre of Canada announced that between then and COP 15, work will need to be done on multiple tracks, including political consultation with Ministers and intersessional work to prepare for further GBF negotiations. (The other Co-Chair is Francis Ogwal of Uganda.) The intersessional work could include streamlining the GBF text, and work on the COP 15 decision that adopts the GBF together with other COP decisions on various supporting issues, digital sequence information (see ‘CBD Working Group fails to advance on digital sequence information as Conference of the Parties looms’, 12 July 2022), and section B bis of the draft GBF (see discussion below). According to van Havre, other necessary work also includes the on-going intersessional work on resource mobilization, indicators (for the goals and targets of the GBF) and finance issues. He then proposed the establishment of a small regionally balanced informal group to guide the proposed intersessional work, which would involve a wider group beyond the Co-Leads of the Contact Groups established by the OEWG for negotiating the GBF. He said that the Co-Chairs would work with the CBD Secretariat to develop a detailed proposal, including a detailed mandate and scope of the proposed intersessional work according to what he had listed. This will be brought to the Bureau of the COP for approval, and the Bureau would consult Parties through their regional Bureau representatives and forward their comments. Van Havre said that OEWG 5 was necessary in order to allow sufficient time to consider the outcome of the informal process being proposed, and to bring the draft GBF text up to a level that would allow for meaningful consideration by Ministers. Argentina took the floor to stress that the process must be transparent, balanced and inclusive of all interested delegations, with real and equitable consideration given to all Parties. It should present a clear roadmap to move forward, it said, stressing that it is important that all Parties agree and take ownership of these proposals. The Democratic Republic of Congo lamented that the negotiations seem to happen each time as if there had been no prior discussion. It proposed that the Co-Chairs develop a specific methodology that will facilitate advancing the negotiations, in order to be able to reach Montreal with a lot more compromise. Switzerland stressed the importance of headline indicators (to measure progress on the GBF’s goals and targets), which it wants to see adopted together with the GBF itself, but acknowledged that not enough progress has been made on the headline indicators. It suggested that the Co-Chairs prepare a pre-meeting document for COP 15, in consultation with the Co-Leads of the Contact Groups, to prepare the ground for a basis to discuss the headline indicators at COP 15. This was supported by Canada. [The work on the indicators has been taking place under the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), and a scientific and technical review meeting on the proposed indicators was held after OEWG 4, in Bonn.] The intersessional work that was identified by the Co-Chairs would focus on a number of issues. From Nairobi, the text of the GBF itself, including four Goals and 22 Targets is contained in 21 pages of heavily bracketed text with multiple options and formulations. Minimal progress has been made, with most of the key disagreements still very much alive and unresolved. Some of the contentious issues include the area-based targets; rights-based approaches and ensuring that the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are fully protected; access and benefit sharing; harmful subsidies; resource mobilization; planning, reporting and review; biosafety; and technology horizon scanning, monitoring and assessment (see for example, ‘The post-2020 global biodiversity framework: Taking stock and some key issues’, 29 November 2021). Section ‘B bis’ A new section (B bis) had been introduced by the Co-Chairs before the resumed OEWG 3 in Geneva on ‘Guidance for the implementation of the GBF’. The purported rationale for the new section was to reflect certain concepts across the GBF, as well as “to avoid overburdening the text and to ensure that the post-2020 framework remains clear, concise and communicable”. According to the Co-Chairs, these included issues such as “gender responsiveness, rights-based approaches, synergies, different conceptualizations of Nature and biodiversity values, and ensuring participation and inclusivity”, which were mentioned in various parts of the text on Goals and Targets. Many delegations and civil society organisations (CSOs) expressed concern over this move as they did not want important principles and approaches removed from operational parts of the text and placed in a general section preceding the operational text. They also wanted these principles and approaches reflected in the operational text. The Co-Chair’s proposal did not include principles, as they had considered that, “as most of the principles referred to are either already included in the text of the Convention or in other international agreements or declarations there may be no need to reaffirm these principles …”. However, for many CSOs and IPLCs in particular, important principles and approaches such as rights-based approaches, respecting human rights obligations and the rights of IPLCs, women and youth, as well as their full and effective participation are hugely important to include, in order to systemically address the biodiversity crisis. For many developing countries, equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, and the provision of financial resources by developed countries are some of the key fundamental principles that they want to see reflected in the GBF, in order for fairness in the multilateral system. As such, this resulted in a proliferation of principles/approaches/guidance introduced into section B bis, while the same issues remain safeguarded in the operational text. During OEWG 4, as Parties embarked on discussions on section B bis in Contact Group 6, the African Group maintained that it was opposed to having a section B bis. Instead, the African Group suggested that the principles contained in the section ‘Overarching principles guiding the preparatory process for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework’ of the COP 14 decision that launched the negotiations of the GBF, were largely similar and would suffice. These principles are – participatory, inclusive, gender responsive, transformative, comprehensive, catalytic, visible, knowledge-based, transparent, efficient, results-oriented, iterative and flexible. This impasse eventually led to the Contact Group Co-Leads mandating a small group of interested Parties, led by the Russian Federation, to attempt to find a way forward. The group proposed the retention of section B bis, with a new title, to guide implementation, without using the terms ‘guidance’ or ‘principles’. There was general agreement on using the principles in the COP 14 decision but it was acknowledged that they were meant to guide the process of developing the GBF and needed to be modified accordingly. The elements of what are deemed ‘approaches’ were important, and needed to be reflected in some way or form. There was also agreement that Section I on ‘Enabling conditions’ from Draft One of the GBF should be maintained (initially because of the substantive overlap, there was some discussion on deleting Section I), and duplications and repetitions should be avoided. The group also proposed intersessional work, which would be facilitated by the OEWG Co-Chairs. Inputs for this work would include the Nairobi meeting discussion and outcomes, all written submissions to date to the OEWG process, and any additional written submissions from Parties. A draft would then be produced and be made available 6 weeks before the Montreal meeting. These elements should be clearly reflected in the roadmap for intersessional work. As such, all options should still remain on the table. The small group proposal only charted the way forward on procedural aspects of how to handle section B bis. During the initial Contact Group discussions, there were sharp disagreements over the various elements in the section. The Contact Group ran out of time to negotiate the substance of section B bis, contained in a non-paper from the Co-Leads. As such, the substance of the section appears as clean text, but the entire section is actually in brackets. The Co-Leads of the Contact Group also gave a reassurance that there will be opportunity to further negotiate the contents of Section B bis (and Section I). Pressing challenges ahead In addition, Section H on ‘Implementation and support mechanism’ and Section K on ‘Communication, education, awareness and uptake’ were not negotiated in Nairobi due to the lack of time. This despite the new Contact Group 6 set up specifically to discuss parts of the GBF that had not been discussed at the resumed in-person OEWG 3 in Geneva in March 2022 (Sections A-D, including B bis, and Sections H-K). Furthermore, the draft decision adopting the GBF, consideration of which had been deferred at the resumed OEWG 3, was also not fully negotiated in Nairobi. Some regional groupings, such as the European Union and the African Group, felt that it was premature to discuss the decision when the GBF was not yet finalized. Others provided their inputs and text proposals. At the final day of the meeting, with time running out, the Co-Chairs admitted that the document was evolving and only based on what had been discussed so far. They urged adoption of the document as it stood, and assured that there would be opportunity for further written inputs, via a future notification from the Secretariat. Clearly much work needs to be done in the run-up to the final meetings at the end of the year. How this intersessional work will be conducted remains to be seen. Lessons from other multilateral negotiating processes show that inclusive and transparent negotiations, building from the bottom up, are critical to ensuring that the negotiations are fair and Party-driven. Bitter experience with the climate change Copenhagen Accord demonstrates that there are no short-cuts – legitimacy and ownership of its outcomes are paramount. Much can be said about the many reasons the negotiations are floundering. Post-2020, multilateralism is more fragile than ever. The lack of equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics has been a bitter pill that developing and least developed countries had to swallow, with the claims of global solidarity by the developed countries ringing hollow. And yet, while developing countries are on their knees due to the pandemic, food shortages, social and economic crises and crippling debt, developed countries continue to march their agenda forward, often in favour of their corporations and financial institutions, while resisting calls to provide the resources and support needed to developing countries. This is the background against which the GBF negotiations are now struggling to conclude (see ‘CBD: Stark North-South divisions in resource mobilization discussions’, 4 July 2022). In other multilateral fora on environment and sustainable development, the same playbook is evident. Attempts to roll back legally binding international commitments agreed at the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, for developed countries to provide financial resources and technology transfer to developing countries in order for them to take the necessary actions, are being repeated like a broken record. At the same time, the burdens for taking action are being pushed onto developing countries along with onerous scrutiny and accountability mechanisms, not matched by corresponding resource transfers and accountability from the developed countries. All this when historical and current responsibilities lie largely with the rich world, while the poor struggle to survive in a world decimated by biodiversity loss and climate change. And while civil society struggle to make their voices heard, corporations are invited to the table to help design solutions to problems that they are part of. These are the politics that form the backdrop against which action to stem biodiversity loss is being negotiated. The biodiversity crisis needs to take centerstage, and desperately needs to be pushed high up the political agenda. Yet, without clearsighted vision of the systemic and root causes of the biodiversity crisis, and the equitable solutions needed, actions will fall short or even be counterproductive. This is the defining challenge of our time. + (* With inputs from Lim Li Ching)
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