•The African team on synthetic biology was led by Dr Benson Mburu of the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI), and Prof Douglas Miano, a biotechnologist from the University of Nairobi.
•“Governments have chosen the right side of history in Montreal, but history will judge all of us if we don’t deliver on the promise made today.”
For negotiators at the recently concluded biodiversity talks at COP15 in Montreal, the experience is similar to being a candidate on an election exercise that stretches on for days.
You stay up late into the night, catch some sleep for about three hours, and then rise again to monitor the process.
Each of the negotiators in Montreal was tasked with standing firm for their country or bloc, haggling with delegates who have taken the opposite stand, and determining where they could compromise to move the agreement along.
The process that hammered out the details of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), has been tedious and took years to build consensus among 196 Parties.
Finally, at around 3.30am Montreal time on Monday, the new Framework was adopted. It comprises four goals and 23 targets to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. The GBF is a legally binding agreement that will guide global efforts to save nature from human destruction until 2030.
Kenya sent about 30 experts to the talks, led by the head of the multilateral environmental agreements Dr Cyrus Mageria.
One of the Kenyan negotiators was Dr Paul Matiku, who chaired the African team of negotiators on financing. He says tensions normally build up towards the end.
“You stand very firm without appearing to make [unreasonable] demands. The negotiations are typical of the division between developed and developing countries,” says Dr Matiku, the CEO of Nature Kenya. He left the negotiating table after 1am on most days since the talks began on December 7.
Dr Matiku’s African Africa bloc teamed up with other developing countries to successfully push for at least $200 billion from rich countries every year to help conserve biodiversity.
“You not only need to be well-grounded in your field, but must also develop good negotiating skills. The challenge in the past has been poor preparation by developing countries or being compromised through promises of official development assistance,” he explains. “A lot of times we become the ones to compromise on our positions and then we end up losing. So we were clear this time our technical officers would be firm.”
The framework adopted on Monday also commits all the 196 signatories of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve and protect at least 30 per cent of land, 30 per cent of inland waters and 30 per cent of marine areas by 2030.
The member countries also committed to reducing by half the harm from pesticides and hazardous chemicals by 2030 and eliminating plastic pollution. Other key targets include: preventing or reducing the rate of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50 per cent; and reducing incentives harmful for biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year.
The deal is the most significant global agreement to protect and restore nature in developing countries in history.
Countries rallied for the deal because the world is fast losing animals, plants and other unique species such as fungi, all of which support human life on earth. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.
Kenya’s participation is significant because the country led the continent on two fronts –discussions on financing and synthetic biology.
Dr Matiku describes the deal as “ambitious” but fears there will not be enough money to implement it.
Although the framework recognises at least $200 billion is needed every year for nature protection, it says this will be achieved through international financial flows from developed to developing countries of at least US$20 billion per year by 2025, and to at least US$30 billion per year by 2030.
“So there’s a funding gap of $170 billion. It’s going to be difficult to find this remaining balance. It’s unethical that developed countries have refused to take responsibility,” Dr Matiku says.
He says developed countries currently spend less than $10 billion every year in financing conservation in the global south, which is home to most of the world’s biodiversity.
Biodiversity in Kenya includes unique bacteria and plants that can be utilised to make medicines.
Image: UN CBD.
The African demand for a standalone fund was rejected, and all new funding will now be channelled through a kitty known as the Global Biodiversity Fund, housed within the Global Environment Facility, the largest multilateral environmental fund in the world, based in Washington DC.
The passion for a standalone fund was captured when a delegate from DR Congo raised an objection to the final agreement early on Monday morning.
The delegate stood up in the plenary and said they will not accept the framework because it did not set up the stand-alone fund.
However, the conference president, Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu, swept aside this opposition and proceeded to drop the gavel, indicating consensus to adopt the framework.
UN CBD spokesman David Ainsworth told journalists the DR Congo reservation was not “formal” and did not, therefore, constitute an objection to the framework. He also pointed out that while consensus-building is always a challenge, the Framework has stayed true to its essence over several iterations.
Kenya also chaired the African negotiators on synthetic biology.
This is a growing field that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities.
The African team was led by Dr Benson Mburu of the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI), and Prof Douglas Miano, a biotechnologist from the University of Nairobi.
Dr Mburu explained synthetic biology techniques can, for instance, be used to re-engineer bacteria to cleanse the environment of plastics.
They can also be re-engineered to produce fuel or even to make medicines.
A loophole Dr Mburu and Prof Miano wanted to be sealed was the appropriation of the genetic code of unique plants and other natural resources in poor countries by biotechnology companies. These are then reproduced on an industrial scale without a fair and equitable sharing of profits with the source countries.
The Montreal deal committed countries to develop a financial mechanism for payments from such discoveries and from digital sequence information (DSI), where such information is digitised and shared.
“You know, when people come to take material from Africa to go and develop, maybe medicines, the people who have taken care of that biodiversity should access the benefits,” Dr Mburu said.
He added: “The CBD has three objectives. One is conservation. The second one is on sustainable utilisation of biodiversity. And the third one is on access and benefit sharing. These are benefits that accrue from the utilisation of biodiversity.”
The co-chairs of the negotiations pertaining to the Framework, Francis Ogwal of Uganda, and Basile van Havre of Canada, said countries must now create or align their existing National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans to the new framework.
A monitoring framework complete with reporting and review arrangements to track progress on implementation was also adopted.
“There will be voluntary peer review and also, a process to add up figures from each country to get a global picture,” added van Havre.
In an emotional statement, Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International called the global deal a “monumental achievement” that was the equivalent of the 1.5C target for climate,but warned it could be undermined by slow implementation and failure to mobilise the promised resources.
“Governments have chosen the right side of history in Montreal, but history will judge all of us if we don’t deliver on the promise made today,” Lambertini said.
This story was produced as a part of the 2022 CBD COP15 Fellowship organised by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.