CBD

CBM has from the beginning supported, and often participated in, the Swedish national delegations to the Conference of Parties (COP) of the CBD, its Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), and its Working group on Article 8(j) concerning the traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. CBM has also been given the task to draft the Swedish national report to CBD on a number of occasions.

New Global Biodiversity Framework 2022

Convened under UN auspices, chaired by China, and hosted by Canada, the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), including four goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030.

Background

The meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, COP-15, was held In December 2022 in Montreal, Canada. At the meeting, the parties have agreed on a new global framework and new international targets for biological diversity. The ambition is to stop the loss of biological diversity globally through the goals.

The planned COP-15 meeting of the parties was to have been held in October 2020 in Kunming, China, with a series of preparatory meetings throughout the year 2020. However, the meeting was canceled due to the corona pandemic and preparatory meetings have mainly been held digitally.

COP-15 was the most important meeting of the CBD since COP-10 in Nagoya in 2010. In Nagoya, the convention's global goals until 2020, the so-called Aichi goals, were established. We know that the Aichi targets were largely not met, for example through the IPBES Global Assessment of the State of Biodiversity.

The director of SLU Center for Biological Diversity, Torbjörn Ebenhard, participated in the Swedish negotiating delegation, and was also one of the negotiators for the EU.

Torbjörn Ebenhards thoughts on the results of the negotiations:

"I am satisfied with the results of the negotiations! As always in convention decisions, this is a compromise and it does not include everything we wanted, but it's good enough. It´s actually better than I had dared to hope for, given the great disagreements between the parties we have seen throughout the series of negotiation meetings.

We now have four overarching goals for 2050 that set a high bar for the desired state of biodiversity, sustainable use, the equitable distribution of benefits from genetic resources, and for financing of implementation. In addition, we have 23 action targets for 2030 that specify how we should address the direct driving forces that cause biodiversity loss, how we address the indirect driving forces in society, and provide guidelines for the implementation of the framework.

What is missing, among other things, are milestones for the state of biodiversity in 2030. We have the target for 2050, but no quantification to show how far we must reach by 2030. Nor do we have a clear target to reduce the global ecological footprint. But we have enough for the countries of the world to start working to stop the loss of biological diversity and make the use of natural resources sustainable. Now it is up to the governments of the world to get started and involve the whole of society in this work."

Torbjörn Ebenhard in negotiationos at Cop 15 in Montreal, Canada. Photo: IISD.