People take part in a march during COP15, the two-week UN Biodiversity summit in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Picture: Christinne Muschi/Reuters
The UN 15th Biodiversity Conference of the Parties concluded its fifth day of negotiations on December 13, in Montreal, Canada.
Negotiations began with discussions on Target 18, on harmful subsidies.
Ambitions which were agreed upon 12 years ago are being questioned by delegates with many countries opposing the outright elimination of harmful subsidies which include subsidies for companies involved in fossil fuel extraction and unsustainable agricultural practices.
After some back and forth, there was an agreement to prioritise addressing the most harmful subsidies but it did not explicitly include a reference to agriculture and fisheries in this context.
The World Wildlife Fund said in a statement that “some bracketed text was removed; some remains but we risk finishing up with a lower level of ambition than we had coming out of Aichi, where the target called for elimination of such subsidies.”
Target 19.1, the core target on resource mobilisation, was opened next but little progress was made before the break, and the discussions were parked pending the parallel discussions in the working group on resource mobilisation, whose deliberations underpin any outcome on this target.
A Friends of the Chair group on Target 10, on agriculture and other productive land and water use, met during the break where there was good support for agroecology approaches and other biodiversity-friendly practices but some Parties oppose such specificity in the target.
In the afternoon, talks on agenda item 12a, the resource mobilisation strategy, reconvened and Parties were faced with a new proposal presented by the Co-Chairs text based on proposals received. The text quickly moved towards another spider’s web of new text and brackets, and no consensus was reached. Surprise surprise.
Meanwhile, the GBF (Global Biodiversity Framework) contact group continued its deliberations by opening Target 14 on mainstreaming biodiversity into government policies and regulations.
The list of public sectors to be covered by such mainstreaming has been moved to the glossary, while some wording that was in the Informal Group text means that the target only talks about “progressively” achieving such mainstreaming, not making much headway on how to actually do this.
The discussions on Target 15, on the regulation of and engagement of the business sector, became badly stuck, especially on the issue of mandatory disclosure. Some progress was made in cleaning the text but a few Parties are still blocking consensus on a strong text on this aspect.
Meanwhile, support for a commitment to reduce the negative impacts of business by half is hanging by a thread.
Working Group II, one of the two formal subsidiary bodies of plenary, met in parallel all day.
Several papers were adopted with minimal discussion, including on invasive alien species.
On marine biodiversity, all conference room papers (CRPs) were approved by the Working Group, including compromise text on deep seabed mining, and references to the new plastic treaty and BBNJ (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction) negotiations.
In the evening, the talks on the resource mobilisation strategy and implementation mechanism continued.
Today, heads of delegations will have met behind closed doors to take stock, preparing the next steps for the arrival of ministers for the High-Level segment of COP15 and their role in making headway on sticky issues.
Current Affairs