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UN / BIODIVERSITY
STORY: UN / BIODIVERSITY
SOURCE: UNTV / WORLD BANK
TRT: 2.02
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ NATS
DATELINE: 2 NOVEMBER 2010, NEW YORK CITY/ FILE
FILE – RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior UN building
2 NOVEMBER 2010, NEW YORK CITY
2. Med shot, dais
3. Med shot, reporters
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity:
“Eighteen years of negotiation, four years of intensive drafting exercise, and on Saturday as Sheppard has said at two o’clock in the morning, history was on the move and the Protocol was adopted. This is for me one the most important legal instruments of the history of multilateral cooperation in general, and environment in particular and UN Treaty in particular.”
5. Med shot, reporters
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity:
“These targets will be implemented, translated into national action plans and strategies within two years. So, from now to our next meeting in India in 2012, all the governments have agreed to revise their action plans and strategy to integrate the Nagoya Outcome.”
7. Med shot, reporter
8. SOUNSBITE (English) Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity:
“We believe that time has come for the US to join the big family of the United Nations. We had the honour of having Mr. Harrison Ford with us, and he made a strong call for the US to join. There was a coalition of NGOs from Japan, more than two-hundred NGOs, had given to Harrison Ford in his capacity as member of the board of CI, Conservation International, a letter addressed to Barack Obama, inviting the President of the United States of America to consider accessing the CBD.”
FILE – WORLD BANK - DATE AND PLACE UNKNOWN
9. Wide, fish swarm under water
10. Med shot, coral reefs underwater footage
11. Wide aerial, tropical coastline
12. Wide aerial, wetlands
13. Wide aerial, tropical forest
14. Close shot, frog on a leaf
15. Close shot, insect on a tree
Member States of the United Nations (UN) adopted a new 10-year global strategy on Saturday (30 October) designed to halt the loss of the world biological diversity, with countries agreeing to draft national implementation plans to safeguard genetic resources within two years, a senior UN official said today (2 November).
By signing on to the Nagoya Biodiversity Compact, countries agreed on targets to reduce by half the loss of natural habitats and raise nature reserves to 17 per cent of the world’s land area and 10 per cent of marine and coastal areas by 2020.
Environment ministers from 193 countries attending the two-week conference of parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which ended in the Japanese city of Nagoya on Saturday, also adopted a new protocol on the sharing the benefits of the planet’s genetic resources.
The protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization stipulates the basic rules on how nations will cooperate in obtaining genetic resources.
Ahmed Djoghlaf, the CBD Executive Secretary, told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York, that the protocol is “one of the most important legal instruments” in the history of environmental protection adding that it would help achieve sustainable development and facilitate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight poverty alleviation and social development targets which States and their partners have agreed to achieve by 2015.
The Protocol outlines how benefits, for example, from when a plant’s genetics are turned into a commercial product, such as a pharmaceutical, will be shared with countries and communities who conserved and managed that resource, in some cases for millennia.
It also lays out rules on how substances and compounds derived from genetic resources will be managed and clarifies important issues related to pathogens, including how developed countries could obtain a flu virus to develop a vaccine in order to stave off an immanent epidemic.
The voluntary drawing up of the national biological diversity plans is intended to stop over-fishing, reduce pollution, protect coral reefs and reduce the loss of genetic diversity in agricultural ecosystems.
Djoghlaf said that the targets established in Nagoya will be “translated into national action plans and strategies within two years.”
The strategy includes a resource mobilisation plan which is aimed at raising current levels of development assistance to support projects aimed at conserving biodiversity.
The CBD Executive Secretary urged the United States (US) to join the Convention, saying that “time has come for the US to join the big family of the United Nations.”
Andorra and the US are the only UN Member States that have not ratified the treaty.
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