By Tierney Smith
RTCC in Hyderabad
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Busy Bees: The Global Youth Biodiveristy Network, followed yesterday’s Dodo awards, with a Busy Bee award for countries have played a particularly crucial role in discussions. The African Group won one award for their work on finance mobilisation, and Gabon the other for their engagement with stakeholders.
Youth Declaration: Go4BioDiv, another youth forum at the conference, shared their declaration with parties yesterday in the form of a theatrical performance. Under the theme of coastal and marine conservation their declaration includes ensuring policy is guided by science and allowing youth more participation in the decision making process.
High-level discussions: The high-level segment of the conference began yesterday with a call from CBD Executive Secretary Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, on behalf of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, for innovative solutions; urging particular attention to be given to oceans.
Protected areas: More progress was made yesterday at the CBD talks with working groups agreeing on texts relating to marine protected areas – ecological and biological significant areas (EBSAs) – and invasive species.
Finance: Delegates in the contact group on finance mobilisation yesterday, continued with the first reading of the current text up for discussion. They discussed whether the target of doubling biodiversity finance, to be given to developing countries from developed countries, was a meaningful target for 2015.
UNEP chief Achim Steiner said we should not give up hope on a positive outcome on finance just yet and said the group were working to reconcile differences.
National Investment Board: The row continues in India today over the proposed National Investment Board – aimed to streamline the development process. India’s Finance Ministery has HIT back at Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s criticIsm for the board saying they are misguided. He said the board would not take power away from the Ministry of Environment.
India’s nuclear aims: India is set to hold talks with Australia about civil-nuclear cooperation. The Indian government aims to buy uranium from Australia for their domestic nuclear plans. Negotiations over a safeguards agreement could be lengthy though and it could be two years before any actual sales of uranium take place.
Picture of the Day: The Go4BioDiv group performed yesterday for delegates as they revealed their declaration…
