We must stop this great extinction in our lifetime.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said this at the COP-MOP biodiversity conference, when belatedly announcing that Japan will offer $2 billion in aid, over the next three years, to nations whose Biodiversity is clearly threatened.
Me thinks: Crocodilian tears and false promises from irresponsible politicians.
As usual in Japan, and especially with the UN, talks over climate and environment, this gentle yet meaningless gesture is a classic case of too little too late. The people who can’t stop the slaughter of whales and dolphins now want to assure us that they can make a meaningless financial gesture too. Ever wonder why?
This week’s conclusion of the Nagoya conference of the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity, saw delegates from 193 countries to have made no progress toward reaching any consensus on the meeting’s most contentious objectives.
The two-week conference aims to set targets for 2020 to slow or stop the alarming rate of extinction of plants and animals and damage to ecosystems. Scientists warn that unless action is taken to preserve species, extinctions will spike and the intricately interconnected natural world could collapse with devastating consequences, from inefficient agriculture to viral explosions of disease and plunging fish stocks to loss of access to clean water for vast populations of humans.
This week, a new study published online in the journal Science showed that 1 in 5 of the world’s vertebrates, or animals with backbones — mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians — are threatened with extinction, within our Lifetime.
Biodiversity participants say that delegates in Nagoya have been unable to agree in any of the areas and especially in the three main focus areas:
A) On setting a target for protected marine areas and setting up a system for equitably sharing the profits from genetic resources, such as plants that Western drug companies have harvested to produce drugs. Developing nations and indigenous groups have argued that they have seen little benefit from such resources, and delegates are seeking to create a legal framework for such beneficial access and economic sharing, to rectify this.
B) Capital flows. Environmental ministers from the Conference of the Parties member nations were unable to reach conclusions, on issues, some of which have been bogged down by concerns about how to pay for increases in protected areas, and indigenous people’s settlements, before COP16 in Mexico concludes this December.
C) Oceanic and Land area protection zones…
No agreement in any of these three worlds means the biodiversity talks have collapsed spectacularly.
Welcome to the alternate reality of UN negotiations. The twilight zone of miscommunications… and false beliefs and meaningless promises.
Japan’s Johnny come lately, offer of $2 billion aid to help developing nations reach species protection goals, although, the biggest by far during the conference didn’t have the desired effect but was rather like a damp squib in a room full of deaf and mute children squabbling for lollipops…
A real chaotic negotiation talking about impossibilities and without real common language…
Rudy Wallace Environmental Parliament Coordinator said that with more than 50% of all species gone, Japan’s move could prompt other governments to step up with financial aid to keep the talks from collapsing, as the U.N. climate talks did in Copenhagen last year.
Yet he also pointed out that Tokyo has a dubious record when it comes to marine and species protection policies. Tokyo helped kill off most of the measures at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, meeting earlier this year that would have limited trade in tuna, sharks and other marine species. Japan has to accept responsibility for this.
Tokyo also has to accept it’s share of responsibility for its killing of whales and dolphins in an organized and programmatic way.
Japan kills off species systematically and is not always the best friend of marine biodiversity. Especially when one sees the documentary ”The Cove” and recognizes that species protection extends across the societal comfort zones, Tokyo’s biodiversity policy sucks.
COP-MOP delegates are still divided over how much of the world’s oceans to designate as protected by 2020. Oceanic protection, which can range from ocean sanctuaries to areas that have sustainable fishing and aquaculture zones need to be established.
Currently, much less than ONE percent of the world’s marine areas are protected and that is clearly inadequate. Actually something akin to 0.0013 % is only protected today. Comically small percentage of the whole of the threatened oceans.
Biodiversity conference delegates are debating now, whether to raise the Oceanic area protection from 1% to 6 percent of the total – which is the official figure advocated by China – and to a necessary 10 percent as advocated by the Environmental Parliament as sustainable and enforceable and something that both Business and many environmental organizations argue for.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Thus it is just to allocate that 10% because this much of our oceans is absolutely the de minimis for species preservation and sustainability.
A 10% is the tithe we should be reserving and returning to Nature.
PS2:
But even that it isn’t important when the species are disappearing and the rate of despiciation is increasing daily.
PS3:
When a man is drowning and the saviours are discussing ad infinitum, what kind of rope to throw at him to save him, you know there is no hope from the eternal meetings in Japan or elsewhere.
Time to act is now.
