ENB:04:10
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WORKING GROUP II
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION: South Africa supported the NGO proposal made Thursday, 9 January, that local area development should be part of the work programme of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST). Chair Shibata noted that a formal decision on this would have to be made by the COP but that the Interim Secretariat had taken note of the NGO and South African proposal.
The Secretariat then introduced document A/AC.241/67, Report on the work of other bodies performing work similar to that envisaged for the CST, as requested in decision 9/11 of INCD-9. Many delegations congratulated the Interim Secretariat on the quality of the report. It contains: two areas of cooperation (convention provisions and methods of cooperation); and bodies identified for cooperation purposes (scientific committees and panels, international organizations and NGOs). The Annex includes profiles of relevant scientific and technical bodies under the Conventions on climate change and biodiversity, the Global Environment Facility, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization and the Ramsar and Bonn Conventions.
Egypt, supported by Tanzania, Kenya and Senegal, suggested that the Interim Secretariat should appoint a group of experts to take an inventory of how the CST could benefit from other bodies. Tanzania, supported by Kenya, Senegal and the UK, suggested that the report should also include regional and subregional bodies and that the Interim Secretariat could forward an inventory of such bodies to COP-1. The UK added that there were also international organizations missing in the list and noted that the methods of cooperation need to be examined by the COP before giving them to the CST. India suggested that the instruction for the CST should also include the facilitation of environmentally sound technology.
The Chair said that the INCD could ask the Interim Secretariat to call together an expert group to take an inventory and to consider regional and subregional bodies. This group could operate similarly to the open-ended consultative process on benchmarks and indicators. He invited delegations to give the Interim Secretariat suggestions on this issue by 15 March. He hoped that draft decisions from Working Group II would be ready by Tuesday, 14 January, so that the Group could consider them for adoption on Tuesday afternoon.