Global Biodiversity deal reached amidst process difficulty

Biodiversity protection and habitat protection are underway in China's Baima Lake National Wetland Park. DW News

Hobart, 28 December (Lim Li Lin) – The 15th Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the centrepiece of its outcome amidst tensions over the way that decision was obtained. 

The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) with five interlinked decisions, that will be the focus of CBD implementation until 2030, had remaining sticky issues even as it was gavelled by the COP15 President as being adopted in the early hours of 19 December. (See separate article titled “New implementation framework for Biodiversity Convention adopted”, 28 December 2022.)

COP15 was originally to take place in Kunming, China in 2020 but COVID-19 led to its multiple postponements.  Part 1 of COP15 was largely ceremonial and procedural and held from 11 to 15 October 2021 in virtual mode, with some diplomatic physical participation in Kunming. Part 2 took place from 7 to 19 December 2022 in Montreal, the seat of the CBD Secretariat. The recent relaxation of the zero COVID-19 policy in China and the current surge in cases there made it unfeasible to hold the COP meeting in Kunming.

Due to the unresolved selection of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) members of the COP Bureau with a Party calling for a secret vote, but quorum was lacking at the late hour of the closing plenary, COP15 was suspended at around 1.00 am on 20 December. COP15 will have to be re-convened to resolve this issue and adopt the final COP15 report, though how this will be done remains to be seen.

COP15 Presidency

China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, Huang Runqiu, was the President of COP15.

Unusually for CBD COP meetings, the Presidency took control, in the final days of COP15, over the key outstanding issues and the package of decisions that would be adopted together with the GBF (see separate article “New implementation framework for Biodiversity Convention adopted”, 28 December 2022). 

A number of difficult issues were identified for consultations, which were facilitated by Ministers – the GBF, resource mobilization and DSI on genetic resources. These consultations took place alongside the COP negotiations at Contact Group level.

In the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Presidency and Secretariat driven processes have become commonplace due to the high stakes and deep vested interests of Parties, particularly from developed countries. These have sometimes resulted in controversial outcomes, most notoriously at Copenhagen (2009), where Party-driven negotiations were side-lined with exclusive small group processes convened by the Presidency, and final texts parachuted in. Furore of developing country Parties in the final plenary led to the Copenhagen Accord being “taken note of” but not adopted. In the COP at Cancun, Mexico the following year a gavelling of key decisions was also done even when consensus was not clear. Some level of involvement in brokering the final outcome is now expected by Presidencies in the UNFCCC, and it remains to be seen if this deviation from long established UN procedures continues to be the case in the CBD.

A plenary stocktaking session on Saturday (17 December), three days prior to the scheduled end of the meetings, heard reports back on the progress of negotiations. Minister Huang announced that having heard back from Parties through the Ministerial consultations, he would draft President’s texts on six issues – the GBF itself together with a COP decision adopting it; resource mobilization; DSI on genetic resources; mechanisms for planning, monitoring, reporting and review; capacity building and development and technical and scientific cooperation; as well as the monitoring framework for the GBF. These would be a package of six interlinked COP decisions that would support the implementation of the GBF’s goals and targets.

Parties and observers waited for the documents to be released on the morning of 18 December and prepared their responses and inputs to it while watching the World Cup soccer finals.

In the afternoon, consultations by the COP15 President with Ministers and Heads of Delegations took place to hear the reaction of Parties to the President’s texts. The COP15 Presidency reportedly presented the President’s texts on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, stressing that the package was a finely balanced compromise, that many would find difficult to accept if the balance was changed.

The Minister-facilitated consultations as well as the Presidency’s consultations were open to all Parties. This inclusive process as well as the careful skill with which the President’s texts was drafted and constructed helped to facilitate general acceptance of it as a package.

That night, a plenary session was convened to adopt the GBF and the five other decisions. The plenary session, initially scheduled for 6.00 pm was continually postponed. Exhausted delegates waited around while rumours of final sticking points and compromises swirled. Early in the morning the next day, the revised versions of the Presidents texts were released and the plenary to adopt them was convened at 2.55 am.

The last-minute compromise that held up the plenary was the introduction of the sunset clause to the GEF Trust Fund, the further consideration of a Global Biodiversity Fund, and the link to the fund established as part of the multilateral DSI benefit sharing mechanism. In addition, some other changes were made to the initial draft of the President’s texts – small technical changes, that did not change the balance of the texts and that would not stand in the way of agreement.

Process to deal with unwieldy texts

The negotiations for the GBF have been on-going since 2019. It was initially supposed to be adopted by COP15 in Kunming in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic upended these plans and resulted in a prolonged and delayed process.

Two, then three, meetings of the Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 GBF (OEWG) were scheduled. Two rounds of negotiations were held before the pandemic grounded international travel and meetings to a halt. On-line meetings were organized to attempt to advance the negotiations and keep up momentum, but these were beset with problems.

Inequitable participation by developing countries due to technological problems resulted in an unbalanced process. As a result of the trust deficit, the draft text ballooned with Parties safeguarding their positions rather than seeking common understanding in order to move forward.

Three meetings of the OEWG were held in quick succession in 2022, once international travel and meetings resumed, as it became clear that the negotiations of the GBF were floundering due to entrenched positions and the long, drawn-out process with frustrating virtual meetings. The fifth and last OEWG meeting (OEWG5) was held just prior to the start of COP15 in Montreal. The negotiations of the GBF spilled over into COP15 and dominated the process.

A controversial informal group process with selected countries from all regions was held prior to OEWG5 to undertake ‘technical’ work to streamline the unwieldy text. This resulted in partial rejection of the streamlined text from the informal group process, despite strong pressure to accept the streamlined text as the basis for negotiations at OEWG5. As a result, text from OEWG4 and the informal group process were both on the table for OEWG5 and COP15, slowing down an already cumbersome process.

The negotiations of the GBF were linked to other negotiations being advanced under the Subsidiary Bodies of the CBD, in the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI). Negotiations on resource mobilization, mechanisms for planning monitoring, reporting and review and capacity building and development and technical and scientific cooperation were conducted under the SBI, while negotiations on the monitoring framework for the GBF were conducted under SBSTTA.

In addition, an outcome on the issue of DSI of genetic resources had also been linked to an outcome on the GBF, and this work was undertaken by the OEWG as well.

All this made for very complex and complicated negotiations in multiple bodies, which required careful sequencing and synchronization. The CBD itself comprises three pillars in line with its objectives – conservation, sustainable use, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. These have spun off into multiple work programmes and cross-cutting issues over the last 30 years, and many decisions on them were also before this COP.

Furthermore, there are three Protocols under the CBD – the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS), the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety of living modified organisms (LMOs), and the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur supplementary protocol on liability and redress for LMOs.  This meant that in addition to COP15 (which in itself had multiple other agenda items, the GBF being merely one of them), meetings of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (COP-MOPs) for the Nagoya, Cartagena and Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Protocols were also held concurrently in Montreal. It was a Herculean task.

The Co-Chairs of the OEWG, Basile von Havre (Canada) and Francis Ogwal (Uganda) had drafted a number of versions of the text under negotiation, beginning with the zero draft, and then Draft One. These drafts had extensive sections besides the 2050 Vision and 2030 Mission and the Goals and Targets. A number of these sections were repetitive of on-going negotiations in the Goals and Targets, and in the Subsidiary Bodies. For example, resource mobilization was being addressed in the SBI, in Goal D and Target 19 of the GBF, and also in Section H on implementation and support mechanism, and Section I on enabling conditions (these last two sections were eventually merged).

Parties expressed frustration with wasting time negotiating the same issues multiple times, and with the many wordy and unnecessary sections that required text negotiations besides the actual Goals and Targets themselves. In the end, most of the sections were considerably shortened or replaced with a summary of outcomes from the Subsidiary Bodies.

For the first assessment of the COP15 outcomes see “New implementation framework for Biodiversity Convention adopted”, 28 December 2022. There will be upcoming articles on the decisions on financial resources and on climate change and biodiversity.

- Third World Network