UN Biodiversity’s COP meets to address 2021 issues
The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is hosting three extraordinary meetings to consider and approve an interim budget for 2021.
The purpose of the meetings is to ensure the continued operation of the CBD Secretariat and strengthen momentum in the implementation of its programme of work pending the holding of postponed governing bodies conferences. The current budget of the CBD Secretariat runs out by December 31, 2020.
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The meetings, the second extraordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the first extraordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and the first extraordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing, will be held remotely and concurrently from November 16 to 19, 2020.
The meetings became necessary due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting postponement of the fifteenth meeting of the COP, originally scheduled for October 2020 and now rescheduled for 2021, as the approval of a programme budget for the next biennium (2021-2022) was not possible through an ordinary meeting of the COP.
Normally, the budget for the CBD programme of work of the CBD is approved for two calendar years, with the programme budget for the current biennium (2019-2020) approved by the COP at its fourteenth meeting, held in 2018.
Next year in Kunming, China, CBD Parties will negotiate a new 10-year global framework for biodiversity related policymaking. The framework will set new goals for the protection and sustainable use of nature.