Montreal (The Hawk): Bhupender Yadav, India's Union Minister for Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, has expressed hope that the COP15 UN biodiversity meeting will establish a consensus on implementing the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.
Yadav stated during the snow-covered Montreal plenary that reversing ecological degradation and arresting global biodiversity loss are crucial for the socioeconomic prosperity and well-being of people, as well as for global progress.
"Under the leadership of the Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is trying to restore and preserve its rich biodiversity," Yadav said in a blog post on Saturday.
"India also collaborates closely with other nations on biodiversity conservation through information sharing and technology exchange."
Speaking at the plenary, which brought together nearly 200 signatory countries with the goal of establishing a global roadmap for the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity and natural ecosystems for the next decade, the Union minister emphasised India's position that the Global Biodiversity Framework's goals and targets should be both ambitious and practical.
As climate change also has an impact on biodiversity, the conservation of biodiversity must be founded on shared but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities.
"I repeated that agriculture is the most important economic driver for rural areas in developing nations, and that the crucial support provided to these sectors cannot be redirected. The majority of the rural population in India is dependent on agriculture and allied sectors, and the government of Honorable PM Modi ji provides a variety of subsidies, including seed, fertiliser, irrigation, power, export, credit, agriculture equipment, and agriculture infrastructure, to support the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers.
"Therefore, India does not agree to the reduction of agriculture-related subsidies and the redirection of the savings to biodiversity protection," he stated. "India has many other national objectives."
"When food security is of the utmost significance for poor nations, imposing numerical targets for pesticide reductions is superfluous and must be left to national discretion based on national conditions, priorities, and capacities.
"Biodiversity conservation necessitates the holistic and coordinated protection and restoration of ecosystems. In this setting, ecosystem-based methods to the conservation of biodiversity must be used rather than nature-based alternatives.
The majority of the implementation burden falls on underdeveloped nations, while the advantages are worldwide. Likewise, the availability of new technology and data on biodiversity remains inconsistent. The majority of megadiverse nations that harbour global biodiversity require proper funding and technological transfer."
Yadav added that, given this context, the most significant difficulty is acquiring the necessary resources to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Greater ambition entails greater cost, which falls disproportionately on countries with the least financial resources.
According to him, the successful implementation of the framework will depend entirely on the mechanisms "we put in place for an equally ambitious structure for resource mobilisation."
"A new and dedicated framework for the supply of financial resources to parties from developing countries is required," he stated.
All nations would then be able to effectively execute the post-Global Biodiversity Framework, he argued, if such a fund were made operational as quickly as possible.
He wrote, "I reiterated India's commitment to working closely with all parties so that we can together produce an ambitious and realistic Global Biodiversity Framework at COP15."
The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a global gathering of countries.
Over the next decade, participants will establish new objectives and construct an action plan for nature. The objective of the Canadian government is to guarantee that COP15 is a success for the environment.
On Saturday, at the stocktaking plenary, all parties were in general agreement that by 2030, $200 billion yearly will be required from all sources, international, domestic, public, and private.
Regarding international flows to poor nations, the negotiators obtained strong evidence that an increase is necessary and should be implemented. However, there is still a vast variety of opinions regarding the biodiversity financing architecture. Some parties would support the creation of an independent fund outside the current financial framework. Others favour improving the present funding systems and are opposed to establishing new ones.
In a number of discussions, it was suggested that a compromise may be reached by establishing a dedicated fund for global biodiversity that is administered by the Global Environment Facility.
(Inputs from Agencies)