Wildlife & Biodiversity

Talks on global plan to protect biodiversity begin in Nairobi

The meet is the first step towards adopting a new global framework on biodiversity post 2020

 
By Kiran Pandey
Published: Wednesday 28 August 2019
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Government officials, experts and activists from at least 100 countries began talks in Nairobi, Kenya, on August 27, 2019, to move towards a new global framework on biodiversity, post-2020.

The 196 Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to adopt the new framework during their 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15), scheduled for October 2020 in Kunming, China. The Nairobi meet is the first step in that direction.

The ‘global framework’ represents the global plan to halt the alarming trends in the state of nature. This has been outlined in various recent reports including the IPBES Global Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Reports and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report titled Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action among others.

The framework aims to set the world on the path towards living in harmony with nature by 2050, according to the website of the United Nations (UN) Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

It takes a holistic approach to the multiple environmental crises facing the earth. The framework builds on the UN Convention’s current Strategic Plan on Biodiversity (2011-2020), agreed in 2010, according to the website.

“Between 1997 and 2011, the world lost an estimated $4-20 trillion per year in ecosystem services owing to land-cover change and $6-11 trillion per year from land degradation,” Cristiana Paşca Palmer, executive secretary, CBD, was quoted as saying in a press statement.

This had disproportionately affected the marginalised communities who depended directly on nature for their livelihoods and ways of life — even as it affected the entire global community, she added.

“There is no time to waste and that the costs of inaction only keep rising,” she said.

The meeting would continue till August 30.

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