Cartagena 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.
 

Download the full issue as pdf

Snowman to snow-mess: negotiations at COP15 are opening doors to risky technologies

Nithin Ramakrishnan, Third World Network

An avalanche of heated discussions accompanied the first snowfall of this winter in Montreal. Regarding synthetic biology and target 17, the texts currently being discussed fall short on establishing robust international rules to govern biotechnology.

The inability to reach consensus, coupled with biased steering from those chairing discussions has severely weakened the text. While the government of Canada hosts a snowman building competition, negotiators of target 17 replace the “spirit of compromise” with a messy snowball fight of finger pointing.

As a result, several of the concerns raised by civil society organisations working on the issues of synthetic biology and biotechnology remain unresolved. For example, the lack of a biotechnology related target that establishes a process for horizon scanning, technology assessment and monitoring and considers socioeconomic impacts of synthetic biology reinforces the need for a global moratorium on the environmental release of gene drives.

It seems that the GBF as it stands today is blindfolded. It will not be able to see further and enable the assessment and monitoring of the potential adverse impacts of biotechnology and synthetic biology. In the case of gene drives, that once released, cannot be controlled, contained, reversed or recalled, this lack of international agreement poses critical threats to biodiversity and human rights.

It seems that the GBF will guarantee neither that new technologies are approached with precaution, nor that countries are equipped with the right tools to assess them. Therefore, their release must be halted. For more information, access the text of the manifesto for a global moratorium on the environmental release of gene drive organisms here:  https://www.stop-genedrives.eu/en/manifesto/

DSI decision should not undermine the scope of the CBD

Nithin Ramakrishnan, Third World Network

While there are rays of hope around the draft decision on Digital Sequence Information (DSI), a very few developed countries continue to forward hardline positions without remorse. These countries have continuously attempted to get a decision that states that DSI is not covered under the scope of the Convention. The current version of the draft decision contains this view in brackets: “Recognizing that there are divergent views on digital sequence information on genetic resources [with regards to its scope under][in relation to its scope in] the Convention on Biological Diversity”.

A worst case interpretation is that this paragraph gives recognition to a view that there is divergence regarding the scope of the Convention, as to whether it deals with DSI or not. This has never been the case. Decision 14/20 only points to divergence regarding the views relating to benefit sharing arising from the use of DSI, and there was a commitment to resolve such divergences. The draft decision, unfortunately, may accept an even graver form of divergence with regards to the scope of the Convention and whether it covers DSI.

To have such an outcome, for a promise of a future fund, of which details are unknown at this stage, is risky for developing countries. It may undermine their positions in many other forums such as the WHO, ITPGRFA and UNCLOS,where they are demanding fair and equitable benefit sharing from the use of the DSI based on the obligations of the CBD. The invitation to the users of DSI to contribute funds voluntarily to the proposed fund adds to this uncertainty. This may unfortunately open the door for users to contribute charity to the fund, but discharge their obligations under the Convention.