UN biodiversity convention concludes

, Oct 20: The ongoing UN biodiversity convention here concluded early on Saturday with the parties agreeing upon a framework for resource mobilisation for conservation of biodiversity.

"I think the most important achievement is that we made it our goal to achieve the unfinished work that was done in Japan, which was resource mobilisation. However, after intense negotiations and tremendous efforts by the entire team and great cooperation by all the parties, we did manage to achieve that goal," Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said.

She said it was a matter of pride that India hosted one of the largest conferences in which over 14,000 delegates from 172 countries participated. The Plenary of the Convention began yesterday evening, but it took a long break to enable the delegates to come to an agreement on the issue of funding. It met again in the small hours of today after reaching an agreement on resource mobilisation.

Indian officials, who were trying hard to work out an agreement on the funding issue, said a proposal was being discussed to double the allocation for bio conservation till 2015 which means the funding would increase from about USD 6 billion to USD 12 billion till then. Natarajan said that she was hopeful about consensus on resource mobilisation by the end of the conference. She had said that about USD 130-430 billion was needed to achieve bio-diversity conservation targets by 2020.

India, which assumed presidency of the convention on biodiversity, had taken the lead to help find a way out of the logjam on the issue of resource mobilisation. The ambitious goals, known as Aichi Targets to be achieved by 2020, have been set for protection of biodiversity.

PTI