Biological Diversity An Uphill Campaign at an Unpropitious Time.

• Author: Zakri, A. Hamid
• Position: United Natins Conference on Environment and Development

It is easier to rally support for particular biological assets, tigers or wetlands, than for a relatively abstract biodiversity, consistently ranked last in public awareness among all environmental issues, ranging from wildlife to climate change. Indeed, its constituency has to be considered soft even among many who consider themselves environmentalists. Yet, governance of a global issue like biodiversity needs the direct involvement of the United Nations. More than 150 Governments signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Today with 175 States parties to it, the CBD must be one of the biggest treaties ever ratified to in the UN system.

The CBD presents an opportunity to realize important goals, but it has been hard to sustain enthusiasm, much less secure funding and institutional commitments. Of all the commitments to come out of UNCED, the CBD has proven the hardest to market to politicians and the public. Parties to the CBD cannot ignore that they are launching an uphill campaign at an unpropitious time, just when the environmental movement's momentum appears to be reaching a plateau. Merely educating the public and world leaders about the stakes, much less agreeing among themselves, will itself consume considerable effort. In this context, the process needs to be realistic about its goals.

From its inception, the CBD has been burdened with a lack of clarity and potential conflict in its institutional mission. There are those whose primary motive is to conserve nature for future generations, and there are those for whom conservation must be subordinate to development. Of course, there is an important range of policy options in which the two aims are congruent. But when the path of conservation departs from that of economic benefits, with proposals that would preserve valued assets but at a cost to development, which course will the parties take? Even within the ambit of conservation, institutional tensions persist that need to be resolved. Is this new framework convention an opportunity to attack all biology-related problems on all fronts? But there is already a host of treaties, agreements and institutions that address biodiversity.

Some believe that is part of the problem, that the present fragmentation of effort is too "piecemeal", and that all these diverse efforts require coordination or consolidation. Desertification, rivers, toxic...