Coverage of Selected Side Events at the UN Biodiversity Conference

The UN Biodiversity Conference 2016 will be held from 2-17 December 2016, in Cancún, Mexico. It will begin with a High-level segment under the theme ‘Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Well-being,’ to be held from 2-3 December, which will be hosted by the Mexican government and organized with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This will be followed by concurrent meetings of the thirteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (CBD COP 13), the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP-MOP 8) and the second meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (COP-MOP 2).

Over 250 hundred side events are scheduled to take place during the Conference. Side events are an excellent opportunity for a wide range of organizations, from governments and international organizations, to civil society, academia and private sector organizations, to highlight an array of important biodiversity-related issues at conferences of the CBD. These events provide a platform for information dissemination, capacity building, policy discussions and legitimizing global governance.