Summary
On Wednesday, 19 July, delegates met in plenary in the morning and in the early afternoon to continue consideration of a revised Chair’s text containing draft recommendations to the UN General Assembly, focusing on the following draft elements of an international legally binding instrument (ILBI): environmental impact assessments, capacity building and technology transfer (CB&TT), institutional arrangements, and final clauses. Plenary also considered: a chapeau to the draft elements of the ILBI; and a procedural recommendation calling on the UN General Assembly to convene an intergovernmental conference as soon as possible, with a possible starting date of 2018.
In the afternoon, Chair Duarte held informal closed consultations on: the ILBI relationships with other legal instruments and relevant bodies; international cooperation; access to marine genetic resources (MGRs), types of benefits to be shared, IPRs and monitoring of MGR utilization; relationships between on area-based management tools and measures under other instruments, and adjacency; strategic environmental assessments; terms for technology transfer, and funding for CB&TT; institutional arrangements; financing; responsibility and liability; and a procedural recommendation to the General Assembly.
IISD Reporting Services, through its Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) Meeting Coverage, has provided daily web coverage, daily reports, and a summary and analysis report from the 4th Session of the Preparatory Committee Established by the UN General Assembly Resolution 69/292: Development of an International Legally Binding Instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. The summary and analysis report is now available in HTML and PDF.
Photos by IISD/ENB | Franz Dejon
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L-R: Gabriele Goettsche-Wanli, Director, UNDOALOS; Chair Carlos Sobral Duarte, Brazil; Alice Hicuburundi, UNDOALOS; and Charlotte Salpin, UNDOALOS
Wini Broadbelt, EU
Lizanne Aching, Trinidad and Tobago
Larisa Chernysheva, Russian Federation
Jung-Eun Kim, Republic of Korea
Alice Revell, New Zealand
Juliette Babb-Riley, Barbados, on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
Zakieh Taghizadeh, Iran
Audrey Naana Abayena, Ghana
Diedre Mills, Jamaica, on behalf of CARICOM
María Alejandrina Sande, Uruguay, making an intervention
Edgar Gutiérrez Espeleta, Minister of Environment and Energy, Costa Rica
Jean Kenfack, Cameroon
Teresa Cruz Sardiñas, Cuba
Michael Googan, Australia
Khurshed Alam, Bangladesh, on behalf of the Least Developed
Countries (LDCs)
Alejandro Alday, Mexico
Mehdi Remaoun, Algeria, on behalf of the African Group
Leonito Bacalando Jr., Federated States of Micronesia
Ma Xinmin, China
Luis Oña Garcés, Ecuador, on behalf of the G-77/China
Ariel Cayanan, the Philippines
Matthías Pálsson, Iceland
John Fintakpa Lamega, Togo
Evan Bloom, US
View of the informal consultations
L-R: Mehdi Remaoun, Algeria, in a conversation with Sergey Leonidchenko, Russian Federation
L-R: Hiba Obaid Darwish Alsheihi, Hiba AlSaleh, and Hassina Ali, United Arab Emirates
Delegates from the Philippines