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ESTIMATING FUNDING NEEDS:

Referring to Article 21, paragraph 1, which states that the COP should determine the amount of resources needed for developing countries to implement to the Convention, the Chair asked delegates for relevant ideas on how to estimate funding needs. He explained that these comments would help the Secretariat to prepare a document on this matter for the next meeting. Mexico suggested working from the figure of US$3.5 billion found in the biological diversity chapter in Agenda 21 and then asked the Secretariat to determine the methodology used to arrive at this figure and other possible methods of assessing necessary funding needs. Belgium stated that financial needs can only be calculated based on a knowledge of country strategies. Brazil noted the intrinsic relationship between incremental costs and the volume of resources available. He also suggested that the Secretariat study the financial benefits to developed countries from the utilization of biodiversity in order to help develop the relationship to the amount of funds that could be transferred to developing countries for the purposes of the Convention.

The Working Group agreed in its report to recommend that the Secretariat should be requested to prepare for submission to the Committee at its next session a study on the various methodologies used in reaching the figure for financial resources needed to fund multilateral biodiversity assistance between 1993 and 2000 contained in Agenda 21.