International governance of biodiversity

Although the challenges of international biodiversity governance tend to be left in the background during climate negotiations for different reasons, several key issues are nevertheless under discussion within the fora concerned.

IDDRI has focused its attention on two of these:

• First, it has been requested by different national and international institutions to lend active support to the feasibility study and international dialogue on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which could become the
  “IPCC for biodiversity”.
• Next, following on from the past few years, IDDRI has coordinated a project to accompany negotiations on the future international treaty on access and benefit-sharing, to be adopted during the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010. In addition to closely following negotiations, IDDRI has worked with companies that use genetic resources, especially those in the pharmaceutical sector. The aim was to better identify their practices, to debate the construction of their positions in negotiations, and to contribute to these negotiations by clarifying the understanding of industrial issues.