Summary
Highlights for Saturday, 22 February 2020
The Committee of the Whole (CoW) of the thirteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CMS COP13) resumed Saturday morning to approve the remaining conference room papers and forward them to the COP for adoption. The COP opened in the afternoon and adopted by consensus all resolutions, decisions, and amendments to the appendices forwarded from the CoW. The CoP also adopted the Gandhinagar Declaration, which affirms that maintaining and restoring ecological connectivity is one of the top priorities for CMS, and calls for ecological connectivity and the important role of CMS to be effectively reflected in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Amy Fraenkel, Executive Secretary, CMS, thanked Fernando Spina and Øystein Størkersen for their work in chairing the Scientific Council and the Standing Committee, respectively. Regional groups then presented their nominations for the Standing Committee and Scientific Council, which were accepted by the COP. In her closing remarks, South Africa lamented the loss of migratory species predicted to go extinct if no urgent action is taken. She recognized the importance of listing species under the appendices to avert extinction and asked parties to step up efforts to implement the Convention. France announced it would make a voluntary contribution to a project linking connectivity of migratory species and ecosystem resilience. The EU highlighted progress made during this COP. She underscored the escalating threats facing biodiversity, and that listings of species in CMS’ appendices should not be celebrated but rather catalyze greater action to protect them. She also noted that the greatest successes are achieved together through cooperation. Finally, she called on parties with contributions in arrears to make their due payments. Fraenkel highlighted that CMS COP13 was the largest ever in the history of the Convention, with 2,550 people attending including 263 delegates representing 82 Parties, 11 delegates from five non-Party countries, 50 representatives from UN agencies, 70 representatives of international NGOs, 127 representatives of national NGOs, and over 100 members of both national and international media. She underscored that ten new species were added to CMS Appendices at COP13, including seven to Appendix I: the Asian Elephant, Jaguar, Great Indian Bustard, Bengal Florican, Little Bustard, Antipodean Albatross and the Oceanic White-tip Shark. The COP was gavelled to a close at 5:18 pm.
IISD Reporting Services, through its Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) Meeting Coverage, has provided daily web coverage, daily reports, and producde a summary and analysis report from CMS COP13 which is now available in HTML and PDF.
Photos by IISD/ENB | Sean Wu
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