UN biodiversity accord raises hopes for climate change

NAGOYA, Japan: Bitterly divided rich and poor nations can work together to save the world from global warming, jubilant negotiators said on Saturday after forging a historic United Nations pact on protecting ecosystems.

Delegates from 193 countries emerged from two weeks of intense diplomacy and a frightening last few hours of bare-knuckle negotiations to seal early on Saturday morning an accord to curb the world’s loss of biodiversity by 2020.
The talks, held in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, particularly saw the European Union, Brazil and the African bloc working closely together to ensure all nations made significant compromises.

“Having this agreement in Nagoya is a message that we can do it if we want,” European environment commissioner Janez Potocnik told reporters, referring to multinational cooperation on global warming.

“I’m convinced that this is something that simply cannot be ignored . . . I think it is a message that will echo in Cancun.”

The next round of UN climate change talks aimed at forging a post-2012 treaty on curbing greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming, will begin in the Mexican city of Cancun on November 29.

Efforts to establish an accord to replace the Kyoto protocol have so far been plagued by disputes between rich and poor nations over who should do more to limit greenhouse gases and take other measures to tackle climate change.

Public faith in the UN’s ability to act as a forum for solving the planet’s major environmental problems plummeted after a summit in Copenhagen last year collapsed with world leaders unable to seal a climate change pact.

The Cancun meeting is meant to repair some of the damage done in Copenhagen and lay the foundations for an accord to be potentially signed in 2011.

But a preparatory meeting in China a month ago saw the familiar types of bickering between rich and poor nations.

Brazil, which has been a leading voice for developing countries in both the climate change and biodiversity negotiations, also said the Nagoya accord offered hope for the other UN battle.

“What we have here is a good result, which shows you can get good results from the multilateral process. So we do believe we can get good results also in Cancun,” Brazil’s Environment Minister, Izabella Teixeira, told reporters.

“I think Nagoya shows we are able to negotiate, we are able to understand the diversity among the countries, but also we are able to promote convergence.”

Green groups also voiced hopes and expectations the events in Japan would give impetus to painstaking UN climate negotiations, particularly after many had expressed concern that the biodiversity talks had been in danger of collapse.

“With the slow progress of talks in the first week, there was fear that Nagoya would wind up like Copenhagen,” Conservation International President Russ Mittermeier said.

“The success of this final day helped to validate the importance of global conventions like these in creating conservation policies and promoting actions on the ground.”

Nevertheless, there are many crucial differences between the biodiversity and climate change negotiations.

Chiefly, the United States was not directly involved in the Nagoya negotiations because it is one of only a few countries not to have ratified the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity.

In the climate change talks, battles between the United States and China—the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases—frequently dominate proceedings.

The biodiversity accord brokered in Nagoya is also not expected to have the same kind of economic impacts for countries as curbing greenhouse gases.

Editor’s note: The full name of this activity and the one in Cancun on November 29 include the term “Conference of Parties [CoP] of the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD].” The Parties are the countries that have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). –KARL MALAKUNAS AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE