Obstacles to nature protection emerge as stakes rise
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From the in Nagoya:
It's fair to say there's a deal of concern here that what emerges at the end of this fornight's meeting could amount to less than it was supposed to.
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Mind you, it was supposed to amount to quite a bit - a pretty comprehensive and detailed plan for securing the preservation of the natural world, while ensuring its elements could be used sustainably and equitably.
That's a lot for one agreement... although in another sense, parties to the CBD have had 18 years to get to the point we're at now, when they decide whether or not to turn into concrete pledges.
The reasons why agreement is proving elusive really fall into three piles.
One is simply . Particularly for developing countries who can send only two or three delegates, there are lots of sessions to go to, lots of technicalities to master, and lots of politics to grapple with.
The second is that when countries get to the stage of making pledges that can materially affect the natural world, they come up slap bang against the hard realities that society currently needs to consume some of the resources that would be regulated under this convention.
That can result in corporate lobbying and disputes within governments - disputes that environment ministeries will typically lose, as environment ministers are typically relatively junior members of administrations.
The third reason is the scope that wily bureaucrats now have to play a legal game called "Trade the Treaties", where long and complex conversations ensue about which jurisdiction a given measure should come under.
As a taster, here's a bit of draft text from the negotiations taking place here on , suggesting that exceptions from the proposed protocol should include:
"...Genetic resources [contained in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture provided they are used for the purposes of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture][under the Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, both current and as may be amended by the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture]..."
The multiple square brackets indicating lack of agreement may be the least of its problems.
I spent a chunk of Monday sitting in on small groups aiming to rationalise key bits of text.
Some of the detailed discussions were eminently sensible. In looking at conserving and protecting the coastal environment, for example, should governments agree to implement
"integrated river basin, and integrated coastal zone management"
...or...
"integrated river basin and coastal zone management"?
The grammatical difference yields a complete change of meaning.
In others, you could sense the profound underlying differences of vision and priorities that exist for different countries here; and especially on targets for marine protection, Trade the Treaties is in full swing.
If this meeting does go the way of , which remains a distinct possibility, it's hard to over-estimate the impact that will have on how concernedÌý people attempt to do conservation.
At the weekend, I shared a dinner table with one of the conservation world's most prominent and astute figures.
If this goes belly-up, the only solution for those aiming to do serious conservation will be to raise lots of money however they can, and spend it wherever they can, acknowledging that the belief (sustained since before the Rio Earth Summit) that these issues could and should be dealt with on a negotiated basis at international level is effectively dead.
It'll be a simpler game; but it risks all kinds of prioritisation that has little to do with need, and it also risks losing support for communities who need to use wildife sustainably in order to survive.
Much conservation, of course, already happens this way.
But global connections are also vital for some species and ecosystems. BirdLife International illustrates that fact with its .
While checking it out on the BirdLife website, I also stumbled across .
It put the talks here in stark perspective.
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I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
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