There was a great contrast in the prominence of sustainable use at CBD COPs 7 and 8. At COP 7 in 2004, sustainable use was one of the major topics of the meeting, with the Parties adopting the Addis Ababa Principles and Guidelines. At COP 8 there was, with one partial exception, little substantive discussion of sustainable use.

There were three main reasons for this. First, the in-depth review of the work on Sustainable Use is not scheduled until COP 10, in 2010. Second, the recommendation on sustainable use coming from SBSTTA 11 (Recommendation XI/13) was not actually tabled on the agenda. This recommendation dealt with a number of different issues, including use of terms, indicators, case studies and regional workshops. It included an Annex which noted the Joint SUSG and UNEP-WCMC workshop on sustainable use indicators held in January 2006. Nevertheless, there was nothing very substantive in the recommendation and it was a casualty of the prioritisation process prior to COP 8 and did not feature on the agenda of COP 8.

The third reason why there was so little discussion of sustainable use was that some of the other agenda items where it might have been expected to figure were taken up with issues of process and procedure. In the review of the Protected Areas Programme of Work most of the focus was on the respective roles of CBD and UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the creation of protected areas in the high seas. The decision eventually reached leaves the CBD with the relatively minor role of offering scientific and technical input into the deliberations of UNCLOS. The discussion of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) focused on the process and timetable for negotiating a new international instrument, rather than on substantive issues. Another issue potentially of relevance to sustainable use was incentive measures. Again, while some Parties wished to make substantive progress on developing the programme of work in this area, in the end there was only agreement on initiating a preparatory process for the review of the existing work, for consideration at COP 9. This may have been partly because of fears that the EU’s incentive measures for environmentally-friendly agriculture are just trade protectionist measures under another name. Substantive work on incentive measures is therefore viewed with considerable suspicion by large agricultural exporters such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada and New Zealand.

The one exception to the lack of attention accorded to sustainable use was in connection with the 2010 target, particularly at side events. The SUSG event on Indicators for sustainable use is reported elsewhere. There were several other side events addressing the 2010 target. A number of issues emerged from these discussions, including: the considerable uncertainties surrounding the meaning of the target; the paucity of the data available for measuring progress to the target; the limited time before 2010; the need to start thinking about post-2010 targets and indicators; and the potential links with poverty reduction targets. In all these issues the place of sustainable use, of both species and ecosystems, is central. One of the challenges for the SUSG over the next few years will be to ensure that the work on targets and indicators for sustainable use takes its proper place within this wider debate about the objectives of biodiversity use and conservation. While the Parties to the CBD will only be reviewing the work on SU at COP 10, there is likely to be considerable debate about the 2010 target at COP 9, and that will be an important place for the SUSG voice to be heard.

May 2006. Barney Dickson is Head of Policy at Fauna & Flora International and a member of SUSG: barney.dicksonfauna-flora.org

Sustainable, June 2006, contents page