BIODIVERSITY CONVENTION INTEGRATES WSSD OUTCOMES INTO WORK PROGRAMME

Sustainable development-related issues featured strongly at the 17-20 March Open-ended Inter-Sessional Meeting on the Multi-Year Programme of Work for the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal, Canada. Building on the political momentum created by the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the meeting focused, inter alia, on the international regime for access and benefit sharing, legal and socio-economic aspects of technology transfer, and the CBD's contribution to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Legal nature of benefit-sharing regime remains controversial

Delegates focused most of their attention on the WSSD mandate to negotiate "within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, bearing in mind the Bonn Guidelines [on Access to Genetic Resources and Fair and Equitable Sharing of the Benefits Arising out of their Utilisation], an international regime to promote and safeguard the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilisation of genetic resources". Among the more straightforward issues was a decision to broaden the mandate to include 'access' in addition to benefit-sharing, which was adopted without any major controversy.

Debates on the legal nature of the regime, however, saw similar divisions among countries, as had been apparent in Johannesburg. Many developing countries, including Mexico on behalf of the Like-minded Group of Megadiverse countries, called for a legally binding regime based on the Bonn Guidelines, arguing that a voluntary regime would not guarantee fair and equitable benefit-sharing. The US reiterated its view that WSSD had deliberately left out the term "legally binding" from the Plan of Implementation, which indicated that the regime would be voluntary. Several countries, including Canada, Australia and the EU, stressed the need to take into account related processes in other forums, such as the WTO, WIPO and FAO, in an effort to ensure coherence and avoid overlap. Canada, supported by Japan, Norway and Switzerland, called for work on applying and assessing the implementation of the Bonn Guidelines at the national level before starting negotiations on the international regime.

In the end, countries instructed the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing at its next meeting on 1-5 December 2003 to consider the process, nature, scope, elements and modalities of an international regime and provide advice to COP-7 (19-30 April 2004 in Malaysia). In support of this work, they invited countries to provide information on experiences gained when implementing the Bonn Guidelines and, along with indigenous and local communities and relevant organisations, to submit their views on process, nature, scope, elements and modalities of a possible regime.

Strong emphasis on sustainable development in CBD's work

A strong focus on sustainable development-related issues as raised by the WSSD characterised the decisions adopted at the meeting. This included a request for the CBD's Executive Secretary to assess the relevance of the MDGs for the CBD's work and explore how in each programme of work biodiversity conservation and sustainable use could facilitate the achievement of the Goals. In addition, the decision on the multi-year programme of work up to 2010 highlighted the need to consider priorities identified by the WSSD, including inter alia "poverty alleviation, human health [and] sustainable communities and livelihoods", in the context of the CBD's existing programmes. Each COP until 2010 should assess as an explicit agenda item the state of progress regarding the Convention's 2010 targets and the MDGs.

On technology transfer -- one of the priority issues at COP-7 -- the meeting instructed the Executive Secretary to analyse the information contained in the thematic report on this issue submitted by Parties and provide a report to the upcoming COP. The meeting furthermore invited WIPO to further explore and analyse the role of intellectual property rights in technology transfer in the CBD context. Developed countries were invited to provide the necessary incentives that would facilitate technology transfer, while developing countries were asked to create an enabling legal, administrative and policy environment to facilitate foreign investment and promote South-South cooperation.

In related developments, the apparent momentum created by the WSSD towards a greater focus on sustainable development was also apparent in the CBD Secretariat's decision to change the theme of the International Day of Biodiversity 2003 (22 May). Rather than focusing on "mountain biodiversity", the day will now be devoted to focusing on "Biodiversity and poverty alleviation - challenges for sustainable development".

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ICTSD reporting; ENB Vol. 9 No. 256, 24 March 2003.