Biodiversity: Environmentalists, Indigenous People Disappointed by COP8

Published on Saturday, April 1, 2006 by the Inter Press Service
Biodiversity: Environmentalists, Indigenous People Disappointed by COP8
by Mario Osava

CURITIBA, Brazil - Environmental and indigenous activists are leaving the 8th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8) with a sense of disappointment, because of the absence both of practical decisions and of their participation in key negotiations.

COP8 was a "failure," according to Greenpeace International. "The Convention on Biological Diversity is like a ship drifting without a captain to steer it," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace political adviser on forests, who complained that the Conference failed to determine means of financing the fulfilment of the goal of significantly reducing loss of biodiversity by 2010.

"We will continue to fight for full participation in negotiations on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing," said Viviana Figueroa of the Omaguaca people from northwestern Argentina. She is one of the spokespersons for the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), which promotes the presence of indigenous people at the COPs.

So far, indigenous people have been kept out of the discussions on these issues, which directly affect them. COP8 also "backpedalled" in other areas, with the voice of indigenous peoples being diluted in discussions on ways of protecting traditional knowledge and practices, said Lourdes Amos, from the Philippines.

National sovereignty over natural resources is not absolute, IIFB said in its closing statement addressed to the final plenary session of COP8. Sovereignty is the principle upon which many governments base their rejection of the presence of indigenous peoples and local communities in the negotiations about access and benefit-sharing.

"No principle can be absolute. If states overreach themselves by allowing overexploitation of natural resources, they endanger our existence, as well as life all over the world," Figueroa told IPS. "There are limits, such as our basic human rights to life and identity," which require "trees, oxygen and the natural environment," she added.

The IIFB and Greenpeace were lone voices in summing up COP8 from the point of view of civil society, as most other social organisations had moved out, reflecting the general sense of frustration and the excessive length of the two-week meeting. But hundreds of activists with the global peasant movement V?a Campesina remained, maintaining their daily protests against transgenics and the World Trade Organisation.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), the main funding source for action on biodiversity, only has three billion dollars available for the next four years, but 25 billion dollars a year will be needed to create the protected areas required to meet the 2010 goal, according to Greenpeace.

There are no prospects of increasing the GEF budget. As it is, a struggle is being waged to prevent it from being reduced, as the United States is threatening to cut its contribution by half. The U.S. is the biggest contributor, providing 20 percent of the total. Other rich countries are also reluctant to increase their contributions

Alternative sources of funding might include bilateral development aid. There is also talk of a new international fund for biodiversity to be financed in innovative ways, through the Tobin Tax on international currency transactions, for instance, or by taxing the arms trade, or levying duties on air fares. However, these approaches have to be discussed over the next four to six years, Kaiser told IPS.

The problem is that the lack of immediate action on protected areas means that the biotech industry can continue to "patent living organisms," under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, and to commit biopiracy, he added.

The COP8 resolutions were "more feeble" than those adopted at the previous conference in Kuala Lumpur two years ago, according to Paulo Adario, coordinator of Greenpeace’s Amazon campaign in Brazil. The Brazilian government, hosting the event, has made progress in protecting its forests, and could have "roared like a lion" and gone all-out for more decisive agreements, but instead it was timid, Adario said.

Greenpeace stirred up the conference, distributing its "Flat Ball Awards" daily since last Friday. Australia, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union and South Korea "won" the awards, for championing Terminator seeds, obstructing negotiations, or taking anti-ecological stances.

But the "evil axis" award, granted by an informal coalition of civil society groups that annually hands out the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy, went to Australia, Canada and New Zealand, accused of being "puppets" of the United States and speaking for its interests. The U.S. is not a party to the Convention.

Young Greenpeace activists set up an hourglass — full of pieces of paper — in the entrance hall of Expo Trade, where the COP8 was held, to protest the snail’s pace implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity since its inception 14 years ago.

It seems that it will take a long time for governments to recognise indigenous people’s rights and the need for them to participate fully in all areas of the Convention, said Donna House, a member of the Navajo Nation in the United States.

Training for indigenous people is indispensable for the conservation of biodiversity and for projects such as the Global Taxonomy Initiative, said Timothy Korianet, of the Karamojong people in Uganda.

© 2006 IPS - Inter Press Service

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