Highlights and images for 18 May 2024

Delegates successfully concluded their deliberations at the 26th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA 26), holding two plenary sessions to approve recommendations for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The contact groups on marine and coastal biodiversity and on the monitoring framework of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) met in the morning.

Want to dig deeper into today's talks? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

During Saturday’s plenary sessions, SBSTTA 26 approved recommendations on:

• risk assessment and risk management;
• synthetic biology;
• marine and coastal issues, including on further work on ecologically or biologically significant marine areas, and on the conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity;
• biodiversity and health; and
• the monitoring framework of the GBF.

SBSTTA 26 further approved final recommendations on the agenda items discussed in plenary on Friday on: matters related to the work programme of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; scientific and technical needs to support the implementation of the GBF; and the detection and identification of living modified organisms.

Many delegates welcomed the meeting’s outcome ahead of an important COP 16, to be held in Cali, Colombia, in October-November 2024. Others were concerned about the substantial number of brackets remaining in some of the recommendations, including but not limited to synthetic biology and biodiversity and health, indicating disagreements among parties, meaning that COP 16 will have a considerable amount of work to reach consensus.

In closing remarks, Acting Executive Secretary David Cooper emphasized the fundamental contributions of SBSTTA in the complex and demanding task of translating science into policy. He highlighted that the adoption of the draft recommendations lay the foundations for a successful COP 16.

Major stakeholder groups called for increased attention to the human rights framework, lamenting the deletion of equity and a human rights-based approach as a potential topic for future work under the Convention.

SBSTTA Chair Senka Barudanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina) said she has never seen a SBSTTA with such a spirit of compromise, pointing to the maturing of the body. She gaveled the meeting to a close at 10:51 pm.