CBD COP16 - A Summary from SULi
Dr Dilys Roe, SULi Chair
The negotiations at CBD CoP 16 finally finished on Saturday 2nd November after a mammoth all night session. While the CoP was successful in agreeing the establishment of a new, permanent subsidiary body to address issues of relevance to Indigenous People and local communities – a huge victory – it failed to reach agreement on financial commitments to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). A new fund – the Cali Fund – was established which will direct payments from private companies (e.g. pharmaceutical companies) who use genetic information for commercial gain to the countries from which the species they are interested in originate. But it was hugely disappointing that no overall agreement was reached on finance or on the monitoring framework for the GBF. Earlier in the proceedings, a decision was passed on sustainable wildlife management which mandates the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management (of which IUCN is a member and in which SULi, represented by Shane Mahoney, participates) to work with the CBD Secretariat to develop additional guidance on sustainable wildlife management (to complement the already existing guidance on a sustainable wild meat sector), to continue to work on indicators for monitoring progress against sustainable wildlife management, and to organise a series of regional consultations.
Dr Dilys Roe in the IUCN Pavillion
IUCN hosted a vibrant Pavillion throughout the CoP with a packed agenda of side events every day. We held a SULi event at the end of the first week (with huge thanks to Shane Mahoney’s organisation - Conservation Visions - for financing this - showcasing the Species Use Database, the 5 Dimensional Sustainability Assessment Framework and the Wild Harvest Initiative of which SULi’s North America regional group is a partner. SULi members Gabriela Lichtenstein and Paola Mosig also presented the results of work they have been doing with a SULi regional grant to explore the extent to which sustainable use has been integrated into the revised national biodiversity strategies and actions plans (NBSAPs) from the Latin American region. Watch this space for more news on that – and from other regional projects - as we launch a series of webinars on SULi members work over the coming months, in response to feedback received in the recently concluded membership survey. Finally, I also participated in the CIC-sponsored Markhor Award – a prize awarded at every CoP to a sustainable use initiative. This year it was won by a community-based protected area in Iran – the MansurAbad community protected area – a great example of unsustainable hunting being transformed into a regulated activity and reaping benefits for both wildlife and people.