Biodiversity meet: agreements by set to be declared in Hyderabad

The fortnight long conglomeration of over 180 countries on which Rs 80 crore has been spent by India is set to deliver nine agreements to protect world's biodiversity with no funds likely to be available immediately. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 18, 2012, 19:20:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The fortnight long conglomeration of over 180 countries on which Rs 80 crore has been spent by India is set to deliver nine agreements to protect world's biodiversity with no funds likely to be available immediately.

Negotiations at Hyderabad have moved at a snail's pace on resource mobilization and financial mechanism to meet the Aichi targets for biodiversity with countries refusing to budge from their stated positions.

The working group on resource mobilization resumed its work on Thursday afternoon with regional consultation groups presenting a broad paper on the issue. The discussions are expected to continue till late in the night but experts don't expect the working group to bridge the wide gap between the rich and the developing world.

The 11th conference was expected to simultaneously provide money for saving biodiversity and a financial mechanism to utilize the funds. The rich nations led by European Union, Japan and Canada had blocked any move towards consensus forcing India to look for a political declaration on Friday.

"The wording of the declaration is being worked out," a government official said, admitting that it will not mention any commitment on the amount of finances. India is seeking a commitment from the developed world to double its funding for biodiversity protection by 2015 once the baseline for the funds required is finalised.

The African group has come up as a champion for the cause of biodiversity and the poor living in Africa saying that the developing world was doing its bit but the rich nations were walking away from their responsibility to pay for the cause.

Namibia strongly advocated the need for the developing world to specifically allocate money for meeting interim targets that have to be completed by 2020.

India has so far not been able to clear the logjam and take the negotiations forward. "Expecting a positive result from the conference is too big a goal to achieve in Hyderabad," said a negotiator from a developing country.

The working groups have so far delivered documents on guidelines for plant conservation, biofuels and biodiversity, incentive measures, marine ecosystem and taxonomy for consideration of the final plenary to start on Friday.

"There are only minor differences on these issues and I am confident that they would be adopted at the plenary," said the official spokesperson for Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN body providing secretarial services for the conference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.