Calls for African biodiversity centre

Yahoo News 17 Sep 10;

LIBREVILLE (AFP) – Non-governmental organisations have called for a biodiversity centre to be set up in Africa to study species and control their exploitation, on the sidelines of a pan-African ministerial meeting.

"On behalf of civil society, we insisted on the establishment of a regional African centre on biodiversity" when experts met in Gabon from Monday to Wednesday, ahead of the ministerial conference, Nicaise Moulombi, the head of the High Council of Non State Parties, told AFP on Friday.

"One of Africa's deficits is its real knowledge of its genetic resources (...) This centre would enable us to conduct monitoring because (...) we don't know what the resources are," added Moulombi, who also heads the Gabonese NGO Growth for a Healthy Environment.

"There are big laboratories which earn enormous amounts of money in Africa from taking samples of species. So there really is a need for a centre on biodiversity."

According to the organising committee, 36 countries are taking part in the Libreville conference aimed notably at agreeing on a common African stance on biodiversity before the UN General Assembly meets next week, and before a UN summit on biological diversity due to take place at Nagoya in Japan on October 18-19.

The ministers' meeting in Gabon was due to end later Friday.

Mouloumbi said that NGOs he represented also called for "a strengthening of the regulatory and legislative frameworks covering access to genetic resources" and the means of "enabling indigenous populations, which still live off hunting and gathering, to have their share. Unfortunately, at the moment there is no equitable distribution."

He added that in looking ahead to the Nagoya summit, NGOs were concerned because of the failure of Copenhagen, where a global summit on climate change took place at the end of 2009. Mouloumbi hoped that the Nagoya meeting would be different.

During last-minute negotiations in Copenhagen, an agreement was reached to help the countries most vulnerable to climate change to the tune of 30 billion dollars (23 billion euros) over three years (2010, 2011 and 2012), then more funds to reach the sum of 100 billion dollars by 2020.

At the beginning of May, African leaders warned that they would oppose a global accord on climate change if the developed nations did not keep their financing commitments.

African Countries To Set Up Wildlife Research Body
Gualbert Mezu PlanetArk 20 Sep 10;

African environment ministers pledged Friday to set up an international research body to study and protect the continent's wildlife, aiming to reverse the loss of its biodiversity.

Africa is famed for the lions, elephants, rhinos and leopards that attract millions of tourists each year, but its wildlife is threatened by population pressure, poaching and deforestation.

A declaration late Friday at the end of a week-long conference on biodiversity in Gabon's capital Libreville said the proposed body would draw on scientists from around Africa.

It would "gather knowledge about biodiversity and its protection ... research into the migration routes of key wildlife species and their habitats and areas vulnerable to climate change ... regional biodiversity centers."

They also pledged to improve cooperation across borders.

The United Nations environment program says Africa houses 1,229 species of mammal, a quarter of all mammals on earth, and about 2,000 bird species, a fifth of the world total.

The Congo basin is the world's second largest rainforest, after the Amazon.

Since taking power in Gabon after his father died last year, President Ali Ben Bongo has cast himself as a staunch environmentalist, banning raw wood exports, expanding protected zones and creating 13 new national parks.