Nudged by Manmohan, UK pledges £1 m for Aichi targets

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has provided the necessary fillip to ensure that the Hyderabad conference on biodiversity delivers a "positive outcome" on resource mobilisation agreeable to over 180 participating countries.

Updated on: Oct 17, 2012, 22:57:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has provided the necessary fillip to ensure that the Hyderabad conference on biodiversity delivers a "positive outcome" on resource mobilisation agreeable to over 180 participating countries.

India became the first champion of the Hyderabad pledge to announce US $50 million (Rs. 250 crore) to strengthen biodiversity institutions within India and abroad on Tuesday.

United Kingdom became second country a day later by announcing one million pounds for implementation of Aichi targets under Nagoya Protocol of the Convention of Biological Diversity.

"Gesture of Prime Minister had positive impact on the negotiations and we are looking at concluding the negotiations by Thursday evening," environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who is also president of the conference, said.

UNEP executive director Achim Stiener also complimented Prime Minister Singh for taking a lead while asking the developed world to "do more" as the developing countries were providing funds to meet the Aichi targets.

"The Nagoya Protocol has accelerated domestic contribution to save biodiversity and I expected the developed countries to response adequately," he told HT.

Natarajan said that they were looking at a positive message that all the countries are committed to meet the Aichi targets agreed two years ago and would be willing to provide sufficient funds.

The conference of over 180 countries is expected to deliver a political statement outlining the need to conserve biodiversity but may not mention the money required for the same. It is likely to outline the timeframe within which the countries will commit funds for implementing the Aichi targets.

Seeing no consensus on resource mobilization, India is looking at having an agreement on interim targets under Nagoya Protocol for achievement with countries agreeing to provide funds to meet these targets in the coming years.

Natarajan said the interim targets should not get bogged down by numbers (read money) as all countries are committed to achieve Aichi targets.

A joint study by India and United Kingdom had prescribed a need of anything between US $130 billion to US $430 billion to meet the Aichi targets.

The developed world led by European Union, Canada and Japan had blocked any move to specify the money required with the developing countries asking them to do so saying that they had gone out of the way to achieve Aichi targets.

The conference has, however, decided that two important agenda items -- reduced emissions from deforestation of forests and geo-engineering -- will be decided by the UN conference on climate change, which is scheduled to meet in Doha, Qatar, later this year.

"It is more a climate issue than that of biodiversity," said MAA Farooqui, additional secretary in the environment ministry.

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

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