Geneva Call for Urgent Action on the Implementation of the Successful Nagoya Outcomes

Montreal, 7 September 2011. On Saturday, 3 September 2011, the past, present and future Presidents of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed and signed, at their annual high-level meeting at Chateau Bossey, Switzerland, the “Geneva Call for Urgent Action on the Implementation of the Successful Nagoya Outcomes”.

The meeting was opened by Mr. Tatsushi Terada, Vice-Minister for Global Environmental Affairs of Japan, speaking on behalf of the President of the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties. Participants also heard a statement from Mr. Bruno Oberle, Director of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) in the Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) and viewed a short video message from Mr. Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Following an update from Mr. Hem Pande, representing the Government of India, on the preparations for the twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, to be held in Hyderabad, India, in 2012, participants reviewed the draft “Call for Urgent Action” and adopted it as proposed after some discussion. A separate report of the meeting will reflect this discussion, which focused on a number emerging issues that will be further developed for inclusion in future meetings of the Presidents.

The “Call for Urgent Action” confirms the continued declining status of global biodiversity, commits its signatories to increased implementation action to reverse this decline and calls on Governments to:
· Sign and ratify, as soon as possible, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing;
· Develop and implement national biodiversity strategies and action plans and adopt national and regional targets within the framework of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets;
· Celebrate the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity; and
· Consider convening a high-level event on biodiversity with participation of Heads of State and Government at the seventieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, to be held in September 2015, on the occasion of the mid-term evaluation of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
· Increase efforts towards achieving synergies among the three Rio conventions in light of the interconnectivity of biodiversity, climate change and desertification.

The full text of the “Call for Urgent Action” and the report of the meeting can be accessed at: http://www.cbd.int/hlm/2011/.

The “Call for Urgent Action” will be forwarded to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at its sixty-sixth session and also to the high-level segment of the special session of the Assembly on desertification, to be held later this month in New York.