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CHALLENGES FOR COP-II
A number of challenges await COP-II. From an administrative point of view, the second COP will have to be structured to ensure that concrete decisions are taken on very difficult issues, including the biosafety protocol, the location of the Secretariat, the GEF, and other important issues related to the Convention’s implementation. Collaboration must also be undertaken as soon as possible with other UN bodies, such as UNDP, FAO and UNESCO, which have expressed their willingness to work closely with the Permanent Secretariat in its work. Given the Secretariat’s daunting workload, coupled with a potentially inadequate budget, collaboration with these and other bodies will be especially critical during the intersessional period.
Clear Guidance to COP-II: Many delegates expressed concern that COP-I had waited too long to establish its three contact groups. It was largely felt that in its first week too much time was spent addressing contentious issues in the large and unwieldy forum of the Committee of the Whole. Governments will have to provide concrete guidance to the Secretariat on both the process and structure of decision-making for COP-II.
Location of the Permanent Secretariat: COP-II will also be entrusted with the difficult task of selecting the location for the Permanent Secretariat. The location of the Bahamas was chosen for COP-I precisely because it was felt that it would provide a neutral location for the resolution of a highly political issue. Nevertheless, many governments insisted that a more deliberate and methodical process, to be undertaken after COP-I, would diffuse the highly-charged politics surrounding this issue. At COP-I, several countries such as Switzerland, Spain and Kenya had lobbied hard for the Secretariat. The neutral location of the Bahamas grew increasingly divisive as they each attempted to mobilize their own base of support among other countries.
Defining sustainable use: One of the biggest obstacles to implementation is the fact that one of the Convention’s three objectives — the sustainable use of biodiversity resources, is still subject to much ambiguity. There is much discussion, but very little case knowledge about how to practice sustainable use. This is another important area where NGO input will be extremely valuable towards moving the process towards greater certainty. As with the Desertification Convention, the Biodiversity Convention can only, at the very most, lay down general measures for conservation and sustainable use at the national level. The political realities of national sovereignty preclude the international arena from being able to do more. At the end of the day, the Convention will only be as effective as the political will to implement it. While there is broad agreement about general approaches, the process must be sensitive to the fact that governments will address biodiversity concerns in very different ways, according to their own national political, legal, ecological and economic interests.
Ensuring local community involvement: The preamble to the Convention refers clearly to the importance of equitable benefit- sharing with indigenous and local communities, where such benefits arise from the use of their traditional knowledge and practices. As with the issue of sustainable use, the challenge will be to give some coherence to the concept of benefit-sharing and to ensure that the “benefits” of the Biodiversity Convention actually “trickle down” into the local communities and that the communities are involved in those stages of decision-making that affect their traditional practices and lifestyles. NGOs maintain that issues of access to genetic resources, intellectual property rights, indigenous and local community knowledge, customs and practices, as well as benefit-sharing should be dealt with as a cluster of issues. Given the fact that indigenous issues have been deferred in the COP’s medium term work programme until 1996, many have highlighted the need for consultation processes to be established with indigenous people at the national, regional and international levels. The results of these consultations should be transmitted to COP-III, when it takes up this issue.
Agreement on the GEF: While governments have at least been able to agree on the GEF on an interim basis, there is still much confidence-building that must be done to bring governments closer to an acceptable agreement regarding the choice of the institutional structure for the financial mechanism. Another related issue is the need to ensure that if indeed the GEF is to be designated as the permanent financial mechanism, the necessary procedures must be put in place to ensure that it is responsive to and supportive of the overall goals of the Convention.