Nagoya Protocol

Side events are organized

• at the COP venue (Blue zone)
• in the Green zone in Cali itself

Below is a list of side events, both in the Blue and Green Zone. Please contact us if your event is missing here.

Monday, 21 October

Business, Biodiversity and Finance: Peace or Conflict with Nature?

CBD Alliance - Monday, 21 October, 13:20 - Blue Zone: Chiribiquete, Asia and the Pacific room

In this side event, we will evaluate the different proposals made by businesses and other actors with vested interests to contribute to Peace with Nature.

Do climate and biodiversity offsets and credits, bioenergy, synthetic biology, and gene drives  contribute to peace between humans, and between humanity and nature? Or will they lead to more conflict?
How can the CBD protect IPs/LCs, women, youth, and small farmers and fishers who generate, restore and protect biodiversity and feed millions without destructive impacts on biodiversity? And how should finance be transformed so that it contributes to true peace with Nature?

Biodiversity Offsets and Credits: examining risks and challenges

Tuesday, 22 October

Gender-responsive and Rights-based Approach to Halt Biodiversity Loss: Peoples’ Solutions to Save the Planet

Side event - Tuesday, 22 October - Global Forest Coalition

Wednesday, 23 October

Women’s Land, Coastal and Water Rights: From Global Commitments to Local Actions

CBD Women Caucus | ILC | ICCA Consortium | and others - Wednesday, 23 October, 11:40 - Blue Zone: Cocuy, Marie Khan Women's Caucus meeting room

Breaking Ground on Youth Indicators for Biodiversity

GYBN | UNESCO - Wednesday, 23 October, 15:00 - Blue Zone: Mavecure, Business and Industry Organizations room

Climate geoengineering and biodiversity - why the CBD needs to affirm precaution

ETC Group | HBF | TWN | IEN | CIEL | CoA  - Wednesday, 23 October, 16:30 - Blue Zone: Cano Cristales, CEE room

Current guidance on risk assessment with focus on gene drive organisms is unfit for purpose

Thursday, 24 October

Look Before We Leap: Why the CBD Needs Horizon Scanning, Monitoring and Assessment

EcoNexus | ETC Group | CBD Women Caucus - Thursday, 24 October, 15:00 - Blue Zone: Sanquianga, GRULAC

Biodiversity and Climate Change: when policies collide

FOE | ECONEXUS - Thursday, 24 October, 15:00 - Blue Zone: Paramos, NGO room

Incentives for Target 22: Spotlighting Investor-ready Youth-led Solutions Towards Effective Implementation of the Biodiversity Plan in Africa

Friday, 25 October

Monday, 28 October

Regulating Finance - A precondition to implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework

Monday, 28 October, 7:30-9:00 - Forests & Finance Coalition - Green zone, Banco de Bogotá, Main Auditorium

Why development banks must stop financing factory farming

Green zone - Monday, 28 October - Stop Financing Farming Coalition, Global Forest Coalition

Tuesday, 29 October

Wednesday, 30 October

Thursday, 31 October

date and time to be confirmed

Can KM-GBF stop Biodiversity Loss? The Challenges and Opportunities

Blue zone event - tbc - Global Forest Coalition

Achieving the KM-GBF Targets Through Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF)Youth Participation

Implementation of the SSF Guidelines and a Human Rights-Based Approach towards Coastal and Marine Conservation

tbc - Side event - tbc - CoopeSoliDar, ICSF and the SSF movements

GE trees

Press conference - Time and date: tbc - Global Justice Ecology Project

Material: https://stopgetrees.org/open-letter/

1. The simple 30x30 should make us tremble: We must do it right this time!. Vivienne Solís Rivera and Marvin Fonseca Borrás, CoopeSoliDar R.L - Costa Rica

2. Fair and equitable benefit sharing for use of DSI, without compromising sovereign rights. Nithin Ramakrishnan, Third World Network 

3. Outcomes of COP 15: Synbio, techno-fixes, and false solutions need to be challenged nationally. Sabrina Masinjila, African Centre for Biodiversity  

4. Agriculture at COP15. Helena Paul, Econexus

5. “Nature Positive” was problematic – but is its absence from the GBF sufficient to prevent harmful offsetting?. Nele Marien, Friends of the Earth International

6. Is the GBF equitable and transformative?. Lim Li Lin, Third World Network 

7. Human rights in the GBF: a new paradigm for advancing implementation and accountability. Ana Di Pangracio, Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN)

8. Our strengths, their weaknesses: Youth reflections on the outcomes of COP15. Global Youth Biodiversity Network

9. What did COP15 bring for women and girls?. Amelia Arreguin, UNCBD Women’s Caucus Coordinator

10. Faiths at COP 15. Grove Harris, Temple of Understanding

Thank you Mr President,
I am speaking on behalf of the CBD Alliance.

We regret the process by which the package was adopted early this morning. It was unjust and unfair. Decisions in this COP are adopted by consensus and we did not see consensus. Much more effort could have been made to arrive at consensus.

Mr President,
We welcome Targets 22 and 23 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) on rights, participation and gender, and will closely monitor their implementation. We also welcome language on the clear respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

But we remain concerned that the GBF does not address root causes of biodiversity loss, and worse, systematically incorporates injustices. This could undermine these targets.

The cause of the biodiversity crisis is a system that places corporate profit and power over people and nature and allows corporate interests to influence the outcomes.

Our governments have regrettably ceded their responsibilities to regulate the private business and finance sector, only “encouraging and enabling” business to report and to label products, moving responsibility to consumers. These will not change the actual impact on biodiversity. There are no accountability measures or responsibility for damage done.

The interests of big agribusiness and the biotechnology industry have also permeated the GBF, with ‘innovation’ as a mantra for techno-fix approaches. There are no horizon scanning mechanisms to help ensure future technologies will not be damaging to biodiversity or people. Precaution has been sidelined.

Moreover, governments have invited corporate interests in, allowing developed country Parties to escape from their legally binding obligations to provide new and additional financial resources, by replacing it with private finance, blended finance and innovative financial schemes, including market-based mechanisms such as biodiversity offsets and credits.

The embrace of offsetting approaches, including Nature-Based Solutions, will not halt environmental damage and ecosystem loss. The promise to compensate for biodiversity loss, by protecting similar ecosystems elsewhere justifies continued biodiversity loss and allows business-as-usual, causing human rights violations and other injustices.

Equity is subverted in this framework. The financial amounts on the table are hugely insufficient, and do not acknowledge the ecological debt that the developed world owes to the poor.

The proposed Trust Fund to be established under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) means that all of the current problems will continue and even worsen. Whatever entity is eventually designated as the Global Biodiversity Fund should not allow the private sector and philanthropic foundations to become part of the governance structure, allowing for unfettered influence of unaccountable entities.

This framework will not deliver substantive transformational change, therefore it is not ambitious. We cannot solve the biodiversity crisis using the same system that caused it.

Thank you.
 

IIFB High Level Statement

Thank you, honorable Minister. It is my pleasure to share with you all the The Yunnan – Tiohti:áke Nature Culture Summit Declaration:

Participants, including indigenous peoples and local communities from all over the world, have come together at the Nature and Culture Summit, held from 11 and 12 December 2022, in Tiohti:áke, today known as Montreal,

We, the participants in the Nature and Culture Summit;

Respectfully acknowledging traditional custodians, Mohawk who call themselves the Kanien'kehà:ka, People of the Flint, who are part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy which includes the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora Nations;

Celebrating the adoption, on 10 December 2022 by COP15, of the Joint Programme of Work on the Links between Biological and Cultural Diversity (the Joint Programme);

We, the participants, therefore, commit to work together, and in a holistic manner to:

1. Promote the recognition of the contributions and rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including free, prior and informed consent, land and territorial rights, their distinct knowledge innovations and practices in conservation, sustainable use, and fair and equitable benefit-sharing arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and its implementation and monitoring, including through the Joint Programme, to ensure the flourishing of both cultural and biological diversity;
2. Recognize the diverse values of nature, including those values held by peoples who are living from, living with, living in and living as nature, as part of wider healing relationships with the environment, based on mutuality, accountability, and reciprocity, respecting the linkages between Mother Earth and biocultural resilience, and the diverse and deep relationships of people to place and space;
3. Further recognize that nature and culture are inextricably linked through traditional knowledge, which in turn is expressed through language, governance, holistic world views, cultural values, ceremonies, stories, songs, and prayers;
4. Prioritise language revitalization and restoration, with sufficient and focused funding, and promote long-term commitments to increase the number of fluent speakers and, in particular, connect youth to land and culture through language, seeking innovative synergies with the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
5. Support the review and updating of the traditional knowledge indicators, particularly linguistic diversity, land-use change and land tenure, traditional occupations and livelihoods;
6. Mobilise adequate and innovative financial resources and promote direct self-administered funding for indigenous peoples and local communities to ensure continuity of their biocultural diversity and support the implementation of the activities of the Joint Programme.

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities look forward to contributing to the implementation of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Women's High Level Segment Statement

As we await the adoption of the Post-2020 GBF, including Target 22 on Gender Equality and Gender Plan of Action, I take this opportunity to thank all of you, Parties and allies who have supported our relentless effort in integrating gender into the Convention's body of work, and in particular into the Psot 2020 GBF. This marks a groundbreaking moment in our years of advocacy, lobbying, discourses, and consultations around the importance of recognizing rights of all women and girls at the heart of the Convention.

Oganised by the Ministry of Environment of Finlands, in collaboration with the CBD Friends of Gender Equality group, Women’s Caucus, Co-Chaired by the Ministry of Natural Resouces and Climate Change of Malawi, and Environment and Climate Change Canada - Ministrial  Breakfast yesterday addressed “Accelaerting the update of a gender responsiveness post-2020 global biodiversity framework”.

We are at a critical juncture of negotiations to enable an agreement for a transformative, inclusive and human rights-based framework that effectively and equitably addresses the  drivers of biodiversity loss with rights-based actions and a whole-of-society approach. Women for the first time are being recognized in their rights and roles as key biodiversity custodians, their knowledge and practices of conservation, sustainable use and fair and equitable benefit-sharing.

If we fail here now to identify and acknowledge gender differences and exclude communities and specifically women in those communities to engage in and benefit from sustained conservation efforts then, we, will be key contributors of inequality, increased poverty, and biodiversity degradation at large. We must ensure inclusive and “whole of society” approach in the implementation of the Post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

These are our shared and key recommendations:

• Make it happen: a fully gender-responsive GBF with a gender equality target
• Adoption of the Post-2020 Gender Plan of Action that will further help in guiding the monitoring and reporting of the GBF
• Adequate resources to fully operationalize the whole of the GBF.
• Full protection of women environmental human rights defenders
• Legally binding social and environmental safeguards applied to new approaches such as Nature based Solutions to ensure gender responsive and rights-based implementation
• Gender responsive headline indicators in the monitoring framework
• Pursuant to the Kunming Declaration, “respect, protect and promote human rights obligations when taking actions to protect biodiversity.”

We call to action for a human rights based Post2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Any decision at COP15 should not perpetuate gender inequalities, including gender-based violence linked to the environment.

We count on you, all Parties to secure the way at this COP to ensure gender equality as part of the solution and pursue the tranformative vision of living in harmony with nature.

Gender equality is a human rights and human rights are non-negotiable.