Natural resources

Towards the creation of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity?

Initiated in 2005 during the international conference on biodiversity organised in Paris, the idea of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity (equivalent to the IPCC for the climate) has come a long way. Two years of consultations in different parts of the world about this mechanism (the International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity, IMoSEB) led to a final scientific meeting in Montpellier in 2007, which proposed its effective launch.
The French government asked Laurence Tubiana, supported by the IMoSEB secretariat and by IDDRI experts (including Lucien Chabason) to assist in implementing the recommendations made in Montpellier at the international level, and contributed to drafting strategic guidelines.

In Bonn in May 2008, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity voted a resolution in favour of the expert panel, now known as IpBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). The intergovernmental meeting that is expected to give a definitive ruling on this project will take place in Kuala Lumpur at UNEP’s invitation from 10 to 12 November 2008.

This intergovernmental platform will have four objectives:
- making a certain number of biodiversity assessments at the sub-regional and global scales;
- tackling emerging issues by summarising existing expertise;
- identifying research issues that are important for biodiversity and responding to requests for information from public decision-makers as well as to questions from intergovernmental organisations and multilateral agreements;
- building scientific capacity to assess biodiversity in different countries.

The governance of this platform will be structured by two committees, one bringing together governmental decision-makers and multilateral organisations (the executive committee) and the other conducting assessment programmes and validating the results (the scientific committee). The idea is thus to use the autumn intergovernmental conference to launch an initial four-year phase that would make it possible to test the operational efficiency of this mechanism.


Learn more : IpBES website
Download : the conceptual note

PUBLICATIONS

* Aide au développement et pays émergents, by Benjamin Garnaud
This text provides a summary of the concluding day of the series of seminars organised by the DGCID and IDDRI. This concluding session, held in Paris on 13 June 2008, ended the series of seminars initiated at the DGCID’s request, and followed on from the international conference organised by IDDRI on 6 and 7 July 2007 on Emerging Powers in Global Governance: New Challenges and Policy Options.
The debates were organised around three round tables that contributed to the drafting of this political note.
Download Idées pour le débat 15/2008.


* L’efficacité énergétique dans le secteur résidentiel. Une analyse des politiques des pays du Sud et de l’Est de la Méditerranée, by Carole-Anne Sénit
This study provides an analysis of the policies of Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMC) in terms of energy efficiency in the housing sector. After identifying the different stakeholders and studying their motives, the author outlines the various kinds of energy efficiency policies adopted, the ways in which they are circulated and the constraints and obstacles to their implementation.
Download Idées pour le débat 14/2008.

* Opportunities for an India-European Union Partnership on Energy and Climate Security, by Carine Barbier and Ritu Mathur
This study, which received financial support from the European Economic and Social Committee, was presented during the twelfth EU-India Civil Society Round Table, which focused on three subjects: trade and investment, climate change and migration. This meeting took place in Paris on 15 and 16 July 2008.
Download Idées pour le débat 13/2008.

Focus on… Climate negotiations and the Accra Climate Change Talks (21-27 August 2008).

This last meeting before the Poznań Conference in December 2008 left little hope of developments in the post-Kyoto negotiations. The progress made particularly in terms of the subject of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is therefore a pleasant surprise.
The format of the conference enabled the Parties to conduct open discussions within the framework of workshops and to clarify certain controversial subjects such as sectoral approaches. The European Union was thus able to increase its understanding of these approaches that it sees as a tool for supporting emissions reduction measures in developing countries, unlike Japan, which sees them essentially as a methodological tool for calculating emissions reduction potential.

The creation of a contact group on “the provision of technologies and financing, including considerations linked to institutional arrangements” under the AWG-LCA (Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention) was also the opportunity to take stock of the different proposals in terms of financial architecture and financial transfers between the Parties, despite no consensus being reached.

The Accra Talks especially confirmed the difficulty of the task to come, with the deadline of the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in 2009. Stumbling blocks persist, such as the interpretation of the concept of “differentiation”, figuring in the principle of common but differentiated responsibility under the Climate Convention of 1992. The scope of the AWG-LCA’s mandate is also a recurrent source of controversy. Nevertheless, parallel discussions within the AWG-KP (Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol) have resulted in progress being made in the Parties’ mutual understanding of the proposals for specific improvements to the Kyoto Protocol.

See more: the Conference on the UNFCCC website

Director of publications = Laurence Tubiana
Editor = Élise Coudane
Translation = Anna Kiff

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