by Vince Cinches (World Animal Protection)
One and a half week into COP17 in Yerevan, one thing stands out: what happens outside the negotiating rooms matters just as much as what happens inside them. By the time country delegations arrive at COP, priorities have been identified, positions developed and negotia-ting instructions agreed.
But these negotiations are not set in stone.
Negotiations are about listening, understanding interests and finding common ground. But whose interests are being heard, and whose are missing? This is an important question for negotiators, particularly when decisions made here will shape biodiversity policies back home.
Biodiversity loss is not happening in isolation. It is connected to how we produce food, exploit wildlife, use land and distribute resources. These affect people, animals, and the planet. Yet, we often negotiate them as separate issues, addressing symptoms while leaving the root causes largely untouched.
And there is another worrying development: Big corporations have learned from the UN climate negotiations. Biodiversity negotiations are becoming another opportunity to influence policy, greenwash business practices and promote questionable solutions. Corporate funding and partnerships can create conflicts of interest, including within civil society, while frontline communities struggle to get their voices heard.
Negotiators need to ask whose interests these solutions serve, who benefits, and who bears the cost?
Listening should go beyond government counterparts, official delegations and familiar organisations. It should include those challenging dominant approaches, especially indigenous peoples, local communities, women, young people and persons with different disabilities whose lives and livelihoods are affected by biodiversity loss.
Many cannot afford to be here. But their absence from the negotiating rooms should not mean their exclusion from the decisions.
This is where organised civil society and counter-power become crucial. Not simply to secure speaking slots, but to challenge corporate influence, question false solutions and bring community perspectives into negotiations.
Civil Society also has work to do. Conservation, Animal Welfare, food systems, climate justice, health and human rights groups need to share information, connect their agendas and build common positions more. We cannot ask governments to connect the dots if we are not doing it ourselves.
I recognise how demanding these negotiations are. Delegates (and observers) work late into the evening and through the weekend, often trying to reconcile compe-ting interests and reach agreements that serve the public good. But meaningful participation should not depend on catching a negotiator in a corridor.
Governments need to engage civil society upstream, while national positions are being developed, not only when those positions arrive at COP. And that engagement must continue throughout negotiations.
My appeal to negotiators is simple: Listen beyond the negotiating table. Questions whose interests are shaping the solutions being proposed. Make room for perspectives that challenge your positions, not just those that reinforce them. Because protecting biodiversity requires confronting the systems driving its destruction, not simply negotiating how to manage the damage.
The agreements we reach must work for people, animals, and the planet, not just those with resources to influence them.