The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Alliance has launched a media advisory highlighting ten of civil society's most pressing concerns to be discussed at the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity. Almost all of the world's governments will gather in Bonn, Germany to debate, negotiate, and hopefully take decisive action for life - both human and non-human - on earth.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the leading United Nations agreement for ecological governance, covering many areas of environmental, economic and social policy, involving thousands of participants and producing large amounts of policies, guidelines and international law.
The media advisory, which can be viewed and downloaded at http://undercovercop.org/media/ intends to cut through the jargon of the official CBD process and to highlight what many civil society groups believe will be the key fights at the Bonn negotiations this month.
“The CBD process produces large amounts of written information that is not readily accessible to the average layperson and negotiations are often difficult to follow,” explains Jessica Dempsey, co-ordinator of the CBD Alliance. “Civil society organizations - including nongovernmental organizations, Indigenous organizations, local communities, and social movements - play a crucial role at the CBD in highlighting the biggest threats and the most urgent issues that governments need to address,” she continued.
Civil society brings expertise and voices of those who are not always represented at intergovernmental conferences, voices with stories to tell about ecological devastation, corporate theft, wrong-headed governmental policies, and the spiraling decline of both cultural and biological diversity. Hundreds of civil society groups from the Global South and the North will be present in Germany to ensure negotiators face up to some of the most pressing issues for the equitable and socially just survival of life on this planet.
The loss of biological diversity and climate change require strong, global, and collective action. Any solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss must be complementary, not undermine each other. Any solutions must put the knowledge and rights of those most impacted at its core: Indigenous peoples, local communities, including family farmers, fisherfolk, peasants, pastoralists and others.
Some of the major concerns of civil society identified by some members of the CBD alliance are:
[1]Food, hunger and agricultural biodiversity, [2] Bad agrofuel energy, [3]Forest biological diversity, [4] Genetically engineered trees, [5] Damaging climate techno-fixes, [6] Ecosystem approach, [7] Ownership of life, [8] Protected Areas, [9] Compensation for victims of genetic contamination, and [10] Invasive species. For a short background on each of these areas see the notes below.
More detailed information on each of these issues, from the perspective of many civil society groups is found within the media advisory (posted at http://undercovercop.org/media/). These media briefs have been assembled through contributions of 30 civil society organizations and networks worldwide in a process facilitated by the CBD Alliance (http://www.cbdalliance.org). These briefings are not representative of all civil society positions around the Convention on Biological Diversity. We encourage media to seek out particular individuals and actors for their own views as the negotiations advance. Those seeking an on-the-ground contact in Bonn can find contacts for each issue at the end of each briefing page.
Civil society groups will hold preparatory meetings on the 17th and 18th of May, and will announce the outcomes of these meetings and expectations for COP 9 on 19 May, at 09:30 in the morning. The conference will be held in the official COP9/MOP4 Press Centre.
Finally, civil society groups will use a variety of means to update the world on the progress (or lack of) at the negotiations. Many updates, including the daily newsletter published by the civil society community (the “ECO”), will be posted on http://www.undercoverCOP.org.
