For the fourth time, starting 21 June, representatives from 196 countries gathered to discuss the best plans and a post-2020 framework to save our ailing planet’s dwindling biodiversity, under the banner of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The host of this event is Kenya, the country where the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in May 1992, and signed by countries the following June in Rio de Janeiro, thus marking its 30th anniversary this month.
The document aspires to make USD 200 billion a year available to help the world’s countries co-preserve their biodiversity; to reduce subsidies ‘harmful’ to biodiversity by USD 500 billion a year; and to increase the availability of funds by USD 10 billion each year. But questions still remain as to who will make these funds available and how.
The working group meeting in Nairobi is the last before the COP 15 talks in Montreal, scheduled for December this year. In Nairobi, the parties will try to resolve as many disputes as possible in the GBF, so that the Montreal deliberations will be as smooth as possible.
At the end of the month, Kenya will co-host the UN Oceans conference 2022, to be held in Lisbon. The focus of this conference will be the so-called Blue Economy, i.e. the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and employment, while preserving ecosystem health. It should therefore promote – in a cyclical manner – a healthy economy and the well-being of oceans, seas and bodies of water.
The programme of the upcoming conference is full of key topics to be discussed. These include youth and innovation, the localisation of action for the oceans through a forum of local and regional governments, a high-level symposium on water, and a forum on investments in the sustainable blue economy.
