By IANS,
Hyderabad: The governments participating in the United Nations conference on biological diversity, which concludes here Friday, have stressed the need for developed countries to allocate substantial financial resources for developing countries for biodiversity conservation.
The participants at high-level segment, during their deliberations over the last two days, urged the developed countries to commit financial resources to implement 2010-2020 strategic plan on biodiversity to meet the Aichi targets, which were agreed at the last conference at Nagoya, Japan.
The parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) were engaged in intense deliberations on the last day to reach an agreement on mobilization of resources.
The differences persist between the developing and the developed countries on the most contentious issue as the eleventh meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP11) to the CBD drew to a close in the next few hours.
A CBD spokesman told reporters that documents on almost all agenda issues were ready for adoption. However, a discussion started this evening on the issue of mobilizing resources and creating a financial mechanism.
David Ainsworth said despite the economic downturn, India and Germany have announced their commitments for biodiversity conservation.
He pointed out that India had already announced $50 million dollars for biodiversity conservation in India over the next two years. Germany said it would provide 500 million euros during 2013-14 for forest protection worldwide.
Meanwhile, a statement issued by India’s Minister for Environment and Forests Jayanthi Natarajan, the president of COP, indicate that the parties reached a consensus on most issues during their deliberations on Oct 17-18.
“On the theme of implementation of the strategic plan on biodiversity, the need to implement biodiversity activities at different levels of governance within a country and the need to ensure substantial financial resources from developed to developing countries, particularly Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States and mobilization of domestic resources were underlined,” said the statement released Friday.
The participants, including ministers from 77 countries, called for greater political commitment for the ratification of Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing.
They stressed the need to expedite the process of ratification and the need for new and additional financial resources and technical support for capacity building initiatives, including innovative financing.
On the theme of activities relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, participants observed the need to document the wealth of traditional knowledge among indigenous and local communities.
In the panel on coastal and marine biodiversity, the major challenges of conservation such as over fishing, ocean acidification, sea bed mining etc were mentioned and need to regulate such activities was underlined.
A suggestion was mooted to establish an International Research Centre on Ocean and Marine Resources under the United Nations.
According to CBD secretariat, 14,400 delegates from 184 countries attended the COP11, which began on Oct 8.