Toxic Talk Poisoning Progress on the Monitoring Framework

Jago Wadley, Pesticides Action Network UK - On Friday, critical Contact Group negotiations over the GBF Monitoring Framework immediately turned toxic: stumbling on just one headline indicator - the ‘Aggre-gated Total Applied Toxicity’ (ATAT) indicator recommended by the AHTEG for pesticide risk, under Target 7.  While the majority of Parties expressing views supported its adoption into the Monitoring Framework, a few did not, with some proposing to revert to the ‘Pesticide Environment Concentration’ (PEC) indicator proposed at COP15, which had been referred to the AHTEG because it had no workable methodology. Reasons for rejecting ATAT mainly focused on suggestions that reducing the use of pesticides was the only way to reduce risk under it. But that’s mistaken. ...

Complaint filed to UNEP about TNFD;  Indigenous-led protest targets Green Zone event

Jeff Conant, Friends of the Earth US - Last week 10 civil society and rights holder organizations filed a complaint to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) grievance mechanism. The complaint alleges that in co-founding and continuing to champion the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) - UNEP has breached its own policies on environmental defenders, gender equity and access to information. Most egregiously, by setting up a corporate-only taskforce that includes many of the very corporations that are failing to act on environmental or human rights abuses. Meanwhile at COP16, on Friday, the TNFD chose to put notorious mining company Vale on a panel. Vale’s role in mining dam collapses in Brazil in 2015 and 2019 devastated nature and killed hundreds of people.  ...

Africa calls for “a Penny for Biodiversity”, micro-investment,  to end digital biopiracy

Nithin Ramakrishnan, Third World Network - As the negotiations for the multilateral mechanism for benefit sharing from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) falter at COP16, it is important to know what the demands of the African Group are and why the world must pay attention to them. Here are Africa’s demands: 1. Users who make mone-tary gains mandatorily share 1% of their gains to the Global Fund; 2. The establishment of a safe, secure and trustworthy DSI database accountable to Parties; 3. The establishment of sector-specific frameworks for non-monetary benefit sharing such as technology transfer and capacity building by COP17; 4. The promotion of networks of CBD-friendly databases that are interope-rable with each other and accountable to Parties.

COP16: An opportunity to reinforce precaution on geoengineering

Kavya Chowdhry, ETC Group & Coraina de la Plaza, Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance - In the race to save the planet, some have found what they think might be a clever shortcut: geoengineering. Geoengineering refers to the large-scale manipulation of the atmosphere and marine and terrestrial ecosystems to try to address some symptoms of climate change. So why tackle the root causes of climate change when you could modify the atmosphere or oceans and sell carbon credits by manipulating nature on a massive scale?