May 22nd, 1998

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Kayapo indian with medicinal plant in Amazonia, Brazil
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Gland, Switzerland.- One of the world's most important international
environmental agreements is in risk of going into rhetorical limbo due to
the indifference of the general public and the media, WWF, the
conservation organisation, said today.
Six years ago the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was signed
by nearly all of the world's nations during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It
finished its Fourth Meeting on Friday, May 15, in Bratislava, Slovakia.
"It is really discouraging to see how just a few years after the creation
of the CBD --potentially the single most important environmental
agreement for most of the developing world-- there is a general lack of
public interest in its development," said Nancy Vallejo, International
Treaties Coordinator at WWF. "Important decisions are made by
government delegations, and yet there is precious little information
actually reaching the public. How can there be any accountability?"
Decisions made in Bratislava covered a wide array of internationally
relevant items that are likely to affect millions of people around the world.
Among these are the exchange of information and benefits related to or
originated by the use of genetic resources traded between developing
and developed countries; the establishment of a programme of work by
the CBD to ensure the conservation of the wide variety of plant and
animal species; and also the establishment of a working group that will
face the task of incorporating into the CBD process the concerns of the
world's indigenous peoples, many of whom possess ancestral
knowledge of plants and animals that could be worth millions of dollars to
the pharmaceutical industry.
Other important decision taken include the consideration of possible
connections between the work done by the CBD and other major
international agreements, such as the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change. In this regard, the conference looked at establishing
mechanisms to finance the conservation of biologically rich natural
forests by charging industry according to the amounts of carbon
emissions they send into the atmosphere.
"However, the first step towards combatting climate change must be a
significant reduction of the emission of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases by industrialised countries," Nancy Vallejo observed.
"Secondly, the burning/clearing of tropical forests, which contributes
between ten and thirty percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, must
be halted."
Contact:
Nancy Vallejo at +41-22-3649532