The United Nation’s Nagoya Biodiversity Summit (COP10) that started on October 18 with the participation of the 193 signatories to the UN’s Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), concluded successfully yesterday.
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| Moments after the adoption of the treaty |
The summit which was scheduled to end on Friday was extended until the early hours of the next day due to intense negotiations on some issues, but the signatories adopted historic decisions that will permit the community of nations to meet the unprecedented challenges of the continued loss of biodiversity. The Sri Lankan delegates too had supported the new strategic plan. The next conference of the parties of CBD - the COP11 - will be held in India in 2012 and will be of special importance to Sri Lanka.
Governments agreed on a package of measures that will ensure that the ecosystems of the planet will continue to sustain human well-being into the future. The meeting achieved its three inter-linked goals: adoption of a new ten-year strategic plan to guide international and national efforts to save biodiversity through enhancing the objectives of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a resource mobilization strategy which provides the way forward to a substantial increase to current levels of official development assistance in support of biodiversity and a new international protocol on access to and sharing of the benefits from the use of the genetic resources of the planet.
The Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity or the “Aichi Target,” adopted by the meeting includes 20 headline targets, organized under five strategic goals that address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and reduce the pressures on biodiversity. In line with these global biodiversity targets, nations will have to make their own targets.
The COP10 summit had 18,000 participants and its main aim was to take measures to protect biodiversity.
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