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Benefiting from biodiversity
JAN 23 -
As the global community is celebrating 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) with focus on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, Nepal can look forward to reaping rich benefits from equitable utilisation of its genetic resources. Nepal is one of the few countries which are enviably rich in genetic resources but financially constrained. For instance, it is a habitat for a number of rare insects. But Nepal has failed to harness its biodiversity potential.
In the opinion of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “Biodiversity is life.” In his message to IYB, he called upon “every country and each citizen of our planet to join together in a global alliance to protect life on earth. Biodiversity is our life.” Nepal should be serious about pursuing its national interests by actively negotiating at UN-sponsored meetings to take advantage of its abundant biodiversity. Opportunities need to be seized by the countries having potentialities, and 2010 is going to be crucial in terms of advancing negotiations, leading, hopefully, to an agreement with legally-binding targets for reducing biodiversity loss.
The international community utilised the UN-sponsored Rio Conference in 1992 to come up with two valuable documents, one on the environment and the other on biodiversity. The UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) was then hailed the first of its kind to highlight the urgency of protecting the environment, even though it lacked targets for reducing emissions. The same conference was able to agree on the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was signed by 193 countries. Also known as the CBD, this is an international treaty for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and equitable sharing of the benefits from utilisation of genetic resources. More importantly, it seeks to address all threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including climate change.
Nepal failed miserably to attract the international community's attention towards its melting Himalayan glaciers at the recently-concluded Copenhagen Summit. The Nepali delegation's numerical strength was unprecedented, and even surpassed that of China which usually sends large delegations to international meetings. However, in terms of output, Nepal's performance was poor. Why the Nepali negotiators didn’t pursue aggressive negotiations through the Group of 77, the bloc of developing countries, is a question that puzzles observers in Nepal.
Learning lessons from the past, Nepal should plan in advance and prepare its agenda for future UN meetings on biodiversity issues. Effective coordination with Nepal's Permanent Mission to UN is inevitable; the mission delegates need to be provided timely and valuable inputs from the stakeholders and the line ministries.
The interlink between climate change and biodiversity cannot be underestimated. Had this not been the case, the world community would not have hastened to sign the CBD along with UNFCCC in 1992.
For biodiversity conservation, no obligatory protocol has yet been signed to reduce biodiversity loss. Ten years after signing of CBD, the international community made some pledges to reduce biodiversity loss through the Johannesburg Biodiversity Summit in 2002. The scientific assessments suggest that countries have failed to meet their pledges. Emphasising the urgency of conserving biodiversity, a high-ranking official of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has aptly stated, “We are joining an extinction crisis. The loss of this beautiful and complex natural diversity that underpins all life on the planet is a serious threat to humankind now and in the future.”
The economics of biodiversity is studied in detail by UN-initiated studies. One such study reveals that loss of biodiversity through deforestation costs the global economy US$ 2.5 trillion annually. Fortunately, the pace of deforestation is decelerating, not accelerating, in Nepal. Since the UN also pushes initiatives like REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation of Forests) in its fight against climate change, it behoves Nepal to play an active role at the follow-up negotiations to the Copenhagen Summit. Hopefully, there will be an agreement on a treaty on climate change by the end of this year, as the world leaders pledged last December.
Before any future negotiations, Nepali delegates should be given a wake-up call so that they pursue the country's national interests. They should be able to impress on other national delegations to agree to our proposals in the form of suitable paragraphs in the relevant UN documents. A golden opportunity is before us as the global community seems committed during this International Year of Biodiversity to direct all efforts towards finalising a protocol, with the emphasis on equitable utilisation of genetic resources of cash-strapped but biodiversity-rich countries. Nepal fits into this category nicely.
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