Citola Blog
COP 10 Convention on Biological Diversity
The 10th Conference of Parties (COP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is being held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, from 18 to 29 October 2010.
The conference is seeking to create a new set of international agreements to reduce the loss of natural habitat, reduce deforestation and ensure that agriculture is sustainable by 2020 with the three main goals:
- Conservation of biological diversity (i.e. biodiversity);
- Sustainable use of its components; and
- Fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources.
Citola has long held the view that the value of ecosystem services (i.e. natural services provided by nature) is often misunderstood and not considered in most economic and commercial analysis. The global economy is transitioning towards renewable energy, sustainable development and ‘putting a price’ on pollution from the realisation that the ‘eco-services’ provided by the environment are crucial to our way of life and that natural resources are finite.
This view is also held by Hal Mooney, an environmental biologist at Stanford University in California, who feels most people fail to understand how dependent humanity is on the many natural services provided by nature. “Those services are considered ‘free’ and not valued under the current economic structures,” Mooney said. This has to change and it will be "one of the strongest messages coming out of Nagoya… we need to get the Ministers of Finance and Trade around the world to understand this," Mooney said.
Many existing organisations and not-for-profits do not have the knowhow, distribution or business models to scale and meet the new and growing needs of the market. This has been stated by Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, "We cannot have the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity without the full engagement of the business community... the idea that only governments and NGOs can succeed in protecting biodiversity has demonstrated its limit”.
The Nagoya conference will be attended by 150 environment ministers and more than 500 business representatives.
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