Paris, 9 July 2007. The twelfth meeting of the Convention’s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, echnical and Technological Advice, held in Paris at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from 2 to 6 July 2007, concluded successfully last Friday. The meeting was preceded for the first time by training sessions attended by more than 70 participants. It was also preceded by a meeting of the Chairs and the Secretariat of the scientific bodies of a number of environmental conventions, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
For the first time, SBSTTA considered, under new and emerging issues, the impact of biofuels on biodiversity and, as a result, this issue will be on the agenda of the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties, to be held in May 2008 in Bonn, Germany. A number of innovations were also introduced in order to enhance the scientific and technical underpinning of the Convention
The meeting adopted eight recommendations on the following issues:
· Application of the ecosystem approach
· Implementation of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation
· Review of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
· Lessons learned from the preparation of the second edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook
· Biodiversity and climate change
· Biodiversity of dry and sub-humid lands
· Potential impacts of biofuel production on biodiversity
· Process to elaborate the procedure for the inclusion of emerging issues on the agenda of its meetings.
These recommendations will be taken up by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention when it meets in Bonn in May next year.
The meeting was attended by more than 630 participants, including representatives from 108 countries and the European Community and 16 United Nations bodies and several other intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and indigenous and local communities.
SBSTTA also approved the provisional agenda for its next meeting, to be held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, in February 2008. The full report of the meeting will be available on the CBD website www.cbd.int shortly and an unofficial summary of the main outcomes of the meeting is available at http://iisd.ca/biodiv/sbstta12.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
The Convention on Biological Diversity is one of the most broadly subscribed international environmental treaties in the world. Opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, it currently has 190 Parties—189 States and the European Community—who have committed themselves to its three main goals: the conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of its components and the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources.
The headquarters of the Secretariat of the Convention is located in Montreal. For additional information, please contact Marie Aminata Khan at +1 514 287 8701; email:
marie.khan@cbd.int
