"Drifting" Biodiversity Conference Closes With Major Issues Still Hanging

[hatrack]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A U.N.-sponsored environmental conference ended Friday with disappointment for environmentalists who saw the contentious issue over how to compensate indigenous communities for genetic resources shelved until 2010. There were high hopes for the eighth biennial Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, which brought nearly 100 cabinet ministers to Brazil to discuss progress on agreements from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

The meeting, however, opened with a gloomy report showing more species were becoming extinct than at any time since the dinosaurs walked the Earth, despite pledges at previous conferences to reduce the extinction rate by 2010. And the most heated issue of how to repay indigenous communities and local residents for genetic resources used to produce pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and agricultural goods was put off until the end of the decade.


EDIT

"The convention on biological diversity is like a ship drifting without a captain to steer it," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace's political adviser on forests. "The negotiations failed to chart a course to stop biopiracy, provide additional financing for protected areas, establish marine reserves on the high seas and to ban illegal logging and trade." One problem with the conference was that each decision required unanimous approval from delegates, representing 187 nations.

Ana Cristina Barros, representative for The Nature Conservancy in Brazil, said it was unreasonable to expect rapid results from the conference. "There's a tendency to think of the conference as a unique event, but what has been discussed is something that is constructed over years," Barros said.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10183

[phantom power]

1. I wonder if this "drifting" is a symptom...

of the fact that nobody with any real power is listening to a damned thing they say. And they know it. They can all meet and "conclude" anything they want, but the United States government won't listen to them. Great Britain won't listen to them. Australia won't listen to them. That's a lot of the world's political power right there. I don't know about the other influential countries, but so far the general theme of international environmental cooperation has been everybody standing in a circle, pointing fingers and saying:

"You first"

[blindpig]

2. And if they did reach conclusions that could be agreed upon by those in

power the conclusions would be worthless. Nobody with any power or privlidge is willing to admit that only shared sacrifice is going to give us a chance at saving biodiversity, ourselves inclusive. Particularly those who have the most to share.