[FMAL-19] Wherein it is obvious I have a degree in English literature
There was a lake; and tonight, my friends, there will be fondue. Welcome to Definitely a Lake and Probably Fondue, wherein I, Bernard Soubry, write very little original and instead let you in on a little secret. Just for your nineteenth email.
Not much work today. When you write the summary and the analysis, you send it in and then go get tequila shots with some Kenyans proper nourishment, and then you wake up to two emails from your editor in New York telling you everything that you need to change or follow up on.
The analysis, in particular, can get tricky. The goal is to write something that makes sense of the past two weeks; that doesn't get too technical; and that walks the thin line between explaining how badly/well a negotiation went without editorializing. I have a vested interest in the preservation of biodiversity, sure, but here's some straight talk.
The comments are answered for and the whole report doesn't come out until tonight or tomorrow. So, just as a little treat, I'm going to let you guys in on it. The full thing, if you want to read the summary, will be available here in a few hours.
Just one side of the views. One view of the dog. One dog in the race. But it gives you a small, sanitized sense of what I've been thinking these past two weeks, and we'll see whether it holds up to whatever editorializing I might do for you tomorrow, our last(!) newsletter day.
Plenty to reflect on/languish about/get excited for tomorrow, but for today--enjoy two thousand words on global biodiversity governance. I quote T.S. Eliot extensively in it. What do you expect? I have a degree in English literature.
Oh, and you wanted a photo, too? Well, I went to the climbing gym again, and they loaned me a t-shirt:
Some real non-touristy Geneva life for you. Authenticity!
A Brief Analysis of the Geneva Biodiversity Conference
To make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
- T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
When Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Executive Secretary Elizabeth Mrema cited English poet T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets at the Geneva Biodiversity Conference, the reference seemed apt. The four-part poem tells of long years of global failure, its scars, and hope for redemption.
So it is for global biodiversity governance. The new post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) set to be adopted at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) has been pitched as the “last, best hope” to address the biodiversity crisis. The previous CBD Strategic Plan culminated with the Aichi Targets and the Nagoya Protocol, both of which came at the cost of extremely difficult negotiations. Despite these efforts, evidence shows that the vast majority of the Aichi Targets have not been met.
What’s worse, the GBF is two years late. What was meant to be a year celebrating its approval became a gauntlet of virtual work as health restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person meetings impossible. This culminated in a virtual first part of COP-15, the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI), and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) in October 2021. The Geneva Biodiversity Conference was meant to set up the second act, delivering something ambitious and tangible that rises to meet the moment.
So: has the Geneva Conference been a beginning, or the beginning of the end? What has it left for COP-15 in Kunming? This brief analysis will attempt to address this question.
The Road to Geneva
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
– T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
There was an enormous amount to catch up on after two years of virtual discussions. The Geneva Conference became a triple meeting: one for each body informing the GBF. At two and half weeks, with three negotiation sessions per day, the Conference was both longer and arguably more grueling for the delegates than a COP.
Yet the gauntlet of SBI, SBSTTA, and the Open-ended Working Group on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (WG2020) reflects just how interlinked each discussion was: talks on targets set by the WG2020 needed scientific advice on indicators from SBSTTA. And implementation, which was the Achilles heel of the Aichi Targets, was the focus of the SBI.
The overall combined agenda was punishing on delegates. Those parties with smaller delegations had little time for rest. As time wore on, some delegates were openly exhausted, complaining that they barely had time to eat between plenaries, contact groups, and informal discussions—let alone read new text. The schedule was necessary in order to catch up before Kunming, but it was obvious to any observer that the quality of discussions—and, consequently, decisions—may have suffered as a result.
What was Achieved, and What Remains
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again […]
– “East Coker”
What did Geneva achieve? By its own standards, not enough. The main purpose of the conference was to advance the draft of the global biodiversity framework to a point where it could be brought to the COP as a document where the technical details were solid, so that ministers can make the final compromises.
From the outset, however, delegates were bogged down in the details. Nearly the entire first week was spent reiterating the same positions that countries have held over the past two years of virtual meetings, instead of beginning negotiations at the points of greatest disagreement. “In some ways,” one senior delegate commented, “it’s as if the virtual sessions had never happened at all.” But then, others suggested, the virtual sessions left many delegates feeling unheard, especially those from developing countries. “For us, it was necessary to make sure that views were expressed equitably,” one explained.
The resulting loss of time meant that delegates were forced to put in extra hours during the second week, fitting informal sessions into whatever time was available. A number of L documents were forwarded to the COP entirely bracketed, or with significant disagreements. And, in the end, the WG2020 will meet again in Nairobi before the COP, as one last attempt to tie up the loose ends left in Geneva.
Nevertheless, some major work did get done. After discontented rumblings and marathon informal negotiations, the road ahead on digital sequence information (DSI) is clear: delegates agreed to a clear schedule of intersessional work. This is far from agreement on key issues, such as the fair equitable sharing of benefits—but it’s essential if those disagreements are going to get resolved. “The fact that we agree to deal with DSI and on the way forward is huge,” said one senior official. “We’re not in a deadlock, or back to the drawing board, and that’s enough for now.”
Similarly, work on indicators progressed. These will be essential to monitoring progress globally, and to ensuring that the goals and targets of the GBF are met. Again, however, success is dependent on future work: those goals and targets remain heavily contested. Contact groups on targets routinely went over their allotted time, and the streamlined targets that were proposed by co-leads usually ended up festooned with amendments from dozens of parties, with delegates joking that they were becoming “Christmas trees.” If the framework is to be clear, concise, and communicable, intersessional work will have to see major concessions from some parties to trim text down.
There were also less grandiose, but not less important gains to be noted. The proposed text now refers to the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs)—who are both the most strongly affected by biodiversity loss, and biodiversity’s most important guardians—throughout. One observer saw this as a clear win: “we didn’t get a standalone target, we got permanence. IPLCs will have to be a part of the GBF. Countries will have to be accountable to that.” The CBD, by providing a forum for IPLCs to air their views, and ensuring their participation in negotiations, has a role in supporting their further involvement, which will be crucial during the implementation of the GBF.
The finalization of the Gender Plan of Action is essential. Women have essential roles as guardians of biodiversity. Ensuring their involvement in GBF actions will be crucial to mainstreaming biodiversity conservation across societies. Work on a standalone goal was also highly visible at the Geneva Conference, as a number of parties placed tulips at their desks to symbolize their support.
Subsidiary bodies: Help or Hindrance?
…shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.
– “East Coker”
Subsidiary Body agenda items that feed directly into the GBF were given priority during the talks. Significant progress was achieved under the monitoring framework, where indicators were established for the eventual goals and targets. But as a result of the prioritization, insufficient time was devoted to other items. Marine and coastal biodiversity issues—a hotly contested aspect of biodiversity conservation—could not complete its work. The extra intersessional meetings will place a significant burden on the COP: delegates will have to invest time in resolving items that should have been wrapped up in Geneva.
Some of the SBSTTA discussions are clear examples of these troubles. At its inception, SBSTTA was meant to provide scientific, technological, and technical advice; science, by its nature, is not negotiable. Sending bracketed text on scientific matters to the COP, which is a political body, puts highly technical information in the hands of those not trained to analyze it.
This is a structural problem. Many delegations, due to their size, have the same people negotiating both political decisions and scientific advice; the result is that many seem to misunderstand some of the scientific consensus established around biodiversity conservation. Hours were lost discussing whether text should refer to “ecosystem services” or “nature’s contributions to people”—despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), whose role is to provide independent scientific advice, repeatedly advised delegates that the former is contained in the latter, and that “nature’s contributions to people” is the concept accepted by scientific consensus.
Having to clarify the science to the members of a scientific body is deeply problematic. If the trend continues, SBSTTA’s capacity to provide technical advice to the COP may be severely compromised.
Making the Most of Time
…last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
– “Little Gidding”
Despite the marathon of the Geneva Conference, a long stretch of the road lies ahead before the COP. The WG2020 will meet for a fourth meeting, a decision which became increasingly necessary as the meeting progressed.
Other related work will need to be finalized. DSI is most pressing, as political and financial divergences still remain far apart. Synthetic biology remains a thorn in the side of the Convention, even as multinational corporations begin to exploit its advances. The CBD, which has stepped in as an international body to deal with the subject, will need to balance national responses with international interest. Monitoring frameworks will need to clarify how they cooperate at the global and national levels.
Expectations are high. “To say that there is absolutely no time to waste would be an understatement,” one delegate said at the end of the session. “And we must get it right.” If intersessional work is not efficient, the world’s environment ministers and their delegations will be left to sort out the mess of targets, scientific advice, and financial mechanisms on their own, and the desire for a political show may win out against a solid, implementable framework. The last time that big a setback happened to global environmental governance was 2009 in Copenhagen. As of the conclusion of the Geneva Conference, such a moment does not seem out of the question. Yet that same delegate held out some optimism: “We’ve threaded that needle before. I think we can do it again.”
Ensuring a Beginning
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
– “East Coker”
The Geneva Conference was one of the most difficult in CBD recent memory. But there remain reasons for optimism. Parties are clearly committed to the process, even with additional intersessional work. And despite its many problems, the current GBF draft reaches across almost all aspects of sustainable development, ensuring that it will be able to support other aspects of environmental governance. In some ways, the optimism is necessary: the world is watching. More international media were present at the Geneva Conference than at previous CBD meetings. Both private and public sector organizations have put forward their support.
But public attention will not solve the many seemingly intractable disagreements. That will take trade-offs and compromises. The faster trade-offs are made, the better the chances for a robust, realistic, and communicable GBF, and the better the world’s chances to address the biodiversity crisis.
“History may be servitude, / History may be freedom.”, wrote T.S. Eliot. At present, the CBD’s history is conflicted, full of hopeful promise that has not yet borne fruit. What kind of chapter the GBF will form remains to be seen. But it appears that a truly useful framework will learn from both the CBD’s successes and failures. Otherwise, it is condemned to repeating the latter, drawing towards a darker end than its beginning.