The Executive Secretary of the CBD, Braulio F. de Souza Dias, in this exclusive interview with ADEBIYI ADEDAPO explains what African countries must do better to preserve Africa’s rich biodiversity.

Q- What is your assessment of the convention so far?

R-   This conference is particularly important because it includes three concurrent COPs, COP 13 of the convention, COP 8 of the Cartagena Proposal and COP 2 of the Nagoya Protocol.

All these negotiations have been going on concurrently during these two weeks, and I can highlight some of the main decisions that we are adopting. Most of the decisions will be adopted tomorrow, we have already adopted seven of them at the plenary last Friday and last Tuesday, some of the main important ones are on mainstreaming biodiversity in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism.

Those were very important and very long decisions, and we counted on support from FAO and the World Tourism Organisation to help us on that. We had high-level segment ministers; we had ministers for agriculture, forestry, fisheries and agriculture from different countries here, together with the ministries of environment and we have the Cancun declaration from that ministerial segment.

Apart from that, we have the first decision, which is based on the first nature assessment from the inter-governmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (ISPPBES). It is a body similar to the IPCC, which is well-known for climate change, this one is a similar panel, but dedicated to biodiversity and ecosystem services. The first major assessment was dedicated to pollinators, pollination and food systems at this COP; we are welcoming that assessment, and then providing for several agreed decisions on how to move forward with the policy and the management to make better use of pollination services. We also have a decision on the inter marriage between biodiversity and human health, which is also very important, since some part of the problems with the human health is directly linked to biodiversity and ecosystems, so we degrade the biodiversity system. There is another decision regarding the oceans; sub-marine biodiversity has received increasing attention in the past five years. In this COP, there are several of those decisions dealing with the issue of debris, for example, ocean and certification, the issue of overfishing and all those things.

We have some good decisions regarding ecosystem restoration, there is an action plan, we have decisions on evasive species, decisions regarding forests in general and the linkage between biodiversity and the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.

We are also working on decisions regarding protocols; we have some ongoing discussions here, which we are finalising in this COP on synthetic biology that is related to the Cartagena protocol and some important decisions regarding the Nagoya protocol.

The Nagoya protocol made good progress in recent years, now we have 93 parties to the protocol, and there are some 40 more countries that are in the final stages of ratification and we are looking forward to that. So overall, we are quite happy about the result, as usual there are some difficult issues which we are still discussing, a lot of issues on capacity building, on promoting synergies among the biodiversity-related conventions, the list is very long.

Q- The theme of COP-13 is ‘Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Wellbeing’, do you think mainstreaming can make a good difference as against the loss of biodiversity?

R-   Sure, most of the loss of biodiversity is associated with economic growth, expansion of agriculture, expansion of land mining activities, expansion of the infrastructure and all of these, so all these activities cause negative impacts to biodiversity, so we need government and the private sector to be more careful as they promote these activities, so that we can minimise these impacts on biodiversity and reduce the so-called ecological footprint. On the other hand, biodiversity is very important for world system and development, we cannot do anything in agriculture without biodiversity, we cannot do anything to develop new vaccines and medicines in the health sector without biodiversity, and the issue of food security is closely related to biodiversity. To protect the world and enhance availability of a clean world, you need ecosystems that feature the water etc. These intellectuals are very important in the fight against poverty, it is not just about job creation and enhancing the income of the poor, it is guaranteeing access to service and access to nature because also, the poor will survive because they can catch a fish, they can go to the forest to harvest some fruits and tubers, so it is essential for the survival of the poor.

Q- What is the role of precautionary principle in all these?

R-            This is  a principle that was agreed at the Rio Summit in 1992, it is a principle that even if you look at all the scientific information, whereby evidence that some activities might lead to some important damage to biodiversity and also pose threat to human health, you should also take some preventive actions to avoid the damage and that is the basis for the Cartagena protocol, so that as bio-technology is growing and developing  new progress, some of these problems can portend harm for the environment and for human health. So to ensure that that doesn’t take place, the Cartagena protocol requires risk assessment conduct before any new biotechnology product is released into the market. That is a major part of the work in the protocol, to enhance capacity problems, to establish a legal framework for governance system, train people to conduct risk assessment and to make sure that no new product is introduced into the country or into the market or cultivated in the field without prior risk assessment, and this will apply also to the broader field of agriculture and synthetic biology.

Q-  I am aware of the intense debate on synthetic biology, it is so important, yet the convention has not decided on it, why?

R-            It is a new issue, synthetic biology is a new development. When the convention was negotiated, they didn’t have that, the only new technology at the time was Genetically Modified Organism (GMOs), that is to introduce a gene into another gene and provide other characteristics or species you’re interested in, but in terms of synthetic biology, you can do many more things, you can manipulate the genes in the species and remove genes, change the genes, enhance the power genes and completely design a new gene in the lab, so it is much more powerful. But it is a very new field, most countries still don’t have the necessary precautionary principles for ensuring biosafety in place.