Biodiversity balancing act required, minister says

The negotiation of the post-2020 Global Diversity Framework is likely to encounter three major challenges, said Huang Runqiu, China's minister of ecology and environment, on Tuesday.

The first challenge is to find a balance among the three major goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity — conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing, so as to ensure a "framework" that is both pragmatic and ambitious, said Huang, who is also president of COP15, during a news conference on Monday in Montreal, one day ahead of the opening.

Secondly, there remains a large funding gap, and differences still exist in funding mechanisms.

Thirdly, though discussions on the access and benefit sharing of digital sequence information have yielded some great progress, many technical and policy issues on the subject have yet to be resolved.

In addition, there are still some differences between the parties around the implementation review mechanism, monitoring and evaluation framework.

"Undoubtedly, the framework is the most important achievement of this meeting, which has historic and symbolic significance. However, we have also seen that for the multilateral negotiation process involving 196 parties, differences are inevitable," he said.

The United Nations Biological Diversity summit, known as COP15, is expected to adopt a plan for worldwide action to reverse the alarming trend of biodiversity loss by 2030.

Global negotiations on the plan, known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, have achieved great progress under China's leadership. "As the president of the biodiversity conference, I can fully understand the above difficulties and challenges. All the negotiating parties have made arduous efforts," Huang said.

Huang said the meeting has made great progress on many topics by forming a "framework" text to be submitted during the second phase of the meeting, laying a good foundation for subsequent consultations.

At the COP14 conference in 2018, China, Egypt and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity jointly launched the "Sharm El-Sheikh to Kunming" Action Agenda for Nature and People, which aims to collect and display nonstate interests, specific commitments and contributions to biodiversity. As of now, more than 10 percent of the commitments and contributions are made by Chinese nongovernmental organizations, enterprises and other stakeholders.

Some Chinese NGOs and enterprises pledged to invest 2.55 billion yuan ($358 million) in the next 10 years to promote 100,000 square kilometers of protected areas to improve protection efficiency.

"I expect all parties and stakeholders to show the greatest sincerity, demonstrate the greatest flexibility, seek the greatest common denominator, and promote the conclusion of the Framework in the second phase of the meeting," Huang said.

The coming High-Level Segment to be held from Dec 15 to 17 will carry out ministerial-level communication and coordination to reach a "framework", seek high-level promotion and reach a consensus.

The key issues requiring dialogue and consultation will be carried out in a transparent, fair and party-driven manner through ministerial coordination meetings.

"We will continuously optimize and adjust the meeting agenda according to the negotiation process, so as to help focus on key issues and speed up the negotiation process," Huang said.