UN biodiversity chief warns of 'difficult' North-South talks

Yahoo News 27 Sep 10;

MONTREAL (AFP) – Just a month before a major international meeting on biodiversity, talks remain "difficult" between northern and southern countries, the Convention on Biological Diversity chief said Saturday.

CBD Executive Secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf noted that southern countries generally want northern countries to share with them the advantages they gain from exploiting national resources.

"These benefits can be monetary or non-monetary, such as technology transfers or sharing research results," Djoghlaf told AFP in an email exchange.

For their part, northern countries want to establish "clear procedures" in exporting countries, he added.

But neither group "has yet agreed on the reach of the (new) international regime or the type of measures that need to be taken to ensure that benefits are shared," the Montreal-based CBD chief acknowledged, before urging more "flexibility."

A meeting of the 193-nation CBD in Nagoya, Japan next month is due to discuss the question of how to pay for the "equitable sharing" of the benefits from natural resources.

But many experts and ministers say the world cannot afford to delay setting up a new panel to assess Earth's biodiversity, a plan that has bitterly divided world powers.

The mooted organization, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), would list Earth's species at global and regional level, and spell out the value of them.

Yet Djoghlaf denied that the differences were prompting the global south to block the creation of the IPBES panel, which is slated to be modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"I was lucky to participate in several high level events on the IPBES and I can assure you that no developing country is opposed to this momentous idea," he added.

The CBD chief said "procedural errors" had damaged the credibility of the initiatives, noting that developing countries have requested that a decision be taken on the panel during the Nagoya meeting so that it may be approved by the UN General Assembly before the end of the current 65th session in December.