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The first day began with the formal opening of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). From today, official negotiations began — there are as many as 35 items that need to be negotiated during the course of the two-week long meeting. As of now, there are 1,498 brackets in the text.
At the first plenary meeting, Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister was elected and officially took over as the president of COP16. The visibly happy minister was handed over the torch from China’s Huang Runqiu, minister of ecology and environment.
Runqiu was the longest serving president to CBD due to the break in the working of the Convention caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Muhamad’s parting gift to him was the replica of the dove made in 2016, when the country signed a peace agreement with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerilla group. The sculpture created by Fernando Botero as a symbol for the peace process is called the La paloma de la paz or the peace dove.
As of now, there are more than 23,000 delegates who have registered for the meeting and the venue is crowded. This is the biggest gathering ever at CBD, revealed Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of CBD.
Many indigenous people and local communities are present at the meeting in traditional attire, providing a visual delight.
The day began at 7 am for many of the delegates when the regional groups got together. The morning also saw four press conferences followed by another four in the afternoon.
There were also plenaries and working group meetings and special events organised through the day. There were 28 side events organised in two slots, which meant that choosing which to attend was not too easy.
There were also stalls and halls showcasing the work of organisations, political groups, countries and industries. The delegation stayed back to discuss issues in four contact groups.
In terms of progress so far, 107 countries have submitted aligned national targets. However, only 34 countries have managed to finalise and submit their NBSAPs — Colombia submitted their’s today itself. This is not a very promising number but Schomaker is not worried as at least the targets are in place.
As I made my way through the day, the issue of access and benefit sharing on the use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources seemed to run as a common thread and everyone from the CBD secretary to the youth groups to the IPLCs talked about it. Obviously, operationalisation of the multilateral mechanism for benefit sharing and the DSI fund would be a big milestone.
Everything about DSI seems to be controversial. I attended a side event organised on ‘Digital Sequence Information and Global Biodiversity Finance: Revenue Mobilisation Options’ by the Alliance of Bioversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (which is part of Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers), the discussions suggested that negotiations are going to be tough as the right options are not part of the final document being discussed.
When I discussed this with a civil society representative, he simply said that while CGIAR was loaned resources for their use, they had no business to sequence it and put it in public domain. Now, that is a sobering thought.
Fortunately, the mood is a bit more upbeat on the issue of forming a new subsidiary body on Article 8 (j), which is on traditional knowledge. Both genetic resources and traditional knowledge are linked and over the next two weeks, I will specifically (but not exclusively) follow these two issues.