OLORUNSOLA JOHN OLUDAISI
The secretariat of the Convention on Biodiversity has revealed it has received a record registration of delegates coming for the Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Part Two), which has been scheduled to hold in Montreal, Canada, from 7 – 19 December 2022.
Independent News Express reports that the UN Biodiversity Conference will convene governments from around the world to agree to a new set of goals for nature over the next decade through the Convention on Biological Diversity post-2020 framework process.
During an interactive session with the world press recently, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the Executive Secretary to the Convention on Biological Diversity, revealed that over 10,000 delegates are due for the meeting.
She said: “We have reached a total of over 10,000 registered delegates. I can tell you that significant representation is coming from all sectors of the society, from business and finance to civil society and the youth.
“It is surprising to note that in the history of our Convention this time as far as the registrations were received, the majority, the big percentage over 60% is from other stakeholders, including the business and financial institutions. It has never happened in the history of the Convention. This clearly shows the awareness of the private sector.”
While elaborating on the composition of the delegates across nations, David Ainsworth, Head of Communications for the Secretary of the Convention of Biological Diversity said: “We had 2,400 delegates registered for governments right now. 54 governments from Africa, which are participating with 1,040 delegates. It is a huge participation. The Asia Pacific region will have 46 governments with 484 delegates. The Central and Eastern European region will have 15 governments with 121 delegates.
“The Latin American Caribbean region will have 31 governments with 284 delegates, and the Western European and other group will have 17 governments with a 484-delegate on board. So that’s it now with organizations, it gets very, very large with regard to business, we’ve got 37 business organizations attending the meeting, they will be 681 delegates available there for that one indigenous peoples and local communities, we have 92 organizations representing ICS.
“Non-governmental organizations have got 432 organizations with 27,188 different delegations, et cetera. So, we have quite an attendance. I also note that we have 11 youth organisations coming, sending 291 delegates to the needle. So, as you can see, we’ve got a very broad representation and indeed we’ve got representation from a lot of the developing countries as well.”
David Cooper, Deputy Executive secretary to the Convention said: “We’ll have a pretty good balance between developed and developing countries. We expect practically all countries to be represented with hopefully.”
On the participation of the United States government, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the Executive Secretary to the Convention revealed that “we are expecting a big delegation from the US, delighted that recently even the head of State appointed a Special Envoy on biodiversity just before the COP. Again, that I think shows the US’ commitment in the biodiversity agenda and we have continued to collaborate with the US on a number of issues. This again demonstrating their commitment on the biodiversity agenda.”
