A consensus between developed and developing nations on the issue of resource mobilisation to achieve the 10-year Aichi biodiversity target is likely to emerge during Thursday’s meeting at the on-going UN conference on biological diversity.
This was stated by Union Minister for Environment and Forest Jayanthi Natarajan, who took over as the chair of the Conference of Parties (11) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, here today.
The issue of resource mobilisation and fixing 10-year expenditure targets to achieve the Aichi goals by 2020 saw differences of opinion between the participating nations. Developing nations wanted expenditure targets to be set and commitments from developed countries to contribute to resource mobilisation, while developed nations were not prepared to support these in the absence of a “robust baseline”.
Special contact groups had been talking to the opposing nations for the last six days in an effort to bring about a consensus on the issue. It has been estimated that a financial pool of between $130 billion and $430 billion was required for the member countries to achieve the Aichi targets.
Jayanthi Natarajan, who had about 10 different bi-laterals on the issue, is confident that a consensus would emerge on Thursday. She, however, made it clear that the consensus would not include “numbers” (financial commitments) at this moment, but would be a kind of “political statement” in support of the Aichi targets.
She said the direction that the consensus was likely to take was that developed nations would be willing to contribute to resource mobilisation for the Aichi mission to succeed.
“The differences are narrow. I am confident that by tomorrow the issue of resource mobilisation will reach an amicable conclusion,” she added.