07/04/2011 - On Friday
(April 8), Brazil's Minister of the Environment,
Izabella Teixeira, will launch a public
consultation on Brazil's biodiversity strategy
towards 2020. The UK's Secretary of State
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
Caroline Spelman, will participate in the
event.
Biodiversity Dialogues:
Building the Brazilian Strategy for 2020
will engage Brazilian society in a process
to strengthen the domestic implementation
of the agreements made at the 10th Conference
of the Parties to the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD COP10), which took place
in October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan.
The event aims to involve
a wide range of representatives from academia,
the private sector, civil society and government
to discuss how Brazil can contribute to
the achievement of the Nagoya agreements
to protect biodiversity.
The Dialogues will be
led by the Brazilian Environment Ministry,
the International Union for Conservation
of Nature (IUCN), WWF-Brazil and IPÊ
(the Ecological Research Institute). The
UK's Department of Food, Agriculture and
Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is supporting the
initiative. The outcome - an action plan
- will be presented at the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)
in 2012.
+ More
Low-carbon, socially
aware business models key to sustainable
development
29/04/2011 - The head
of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) yesterday (April 28) urged businesses
to transform their enterprises into low-carbon
operations that are environmentally sound
and benefit communities in order to remain
profitable and sustainable.
"Business as usual,
which leads to broken ecosystems and a warming
climate, contributes to increasing economic
volatility, and to higher costs and lower
profitability of doing business", said
Helen Clark, the UNDP Administrator, in
a keynote address to the summit on business
solutions for the environment, held in the
Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
"Conversely, I
believe that there will be significant business
and livelihood opportunities, and a better
future for us all, if we collectively commit
to a sustainable course. The way we live
and the way we do business needs to be aligned
with achieving inclusive and low-carbon
development", she added.
Miss Clark said she
believes that, increasingly in global markets,
goods and services with high carbon footprints
and negative social costs will become less
competitive and less desirable. She highlighted
the proliferation of green certification
systems as an indication that future markets
will demand greater compliance with environmentally
and socially responsible standards.
"Markets will adapt
to those global frameworks which are agreed
to by the international community",
she said, citing as an example the Protocol
on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair
and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising
from Their Utilization, which was adopted
last year in the Japanese city of Nagoya.
She said the protocol
established a groundbreaking new standard
for ensuring that local communities and
developing countries benefit more equitably
from the proceeds and use of biological
resources.
Miss Clark expressed
UNDP's solidarity with the one billion people
across the world who live in extreme poverty
and rely on the environment in which they
live for their livelihoods and primary assets.
Preserving ecosystems is critical for their
daily survival and that of humankind, she
said.
She noted that the world's
poor are the most vulnerable to the effects
of environmental degradation, including
severe floods and droughts, extreme temperatures
and rising sea levels resulting from climate
change.
"How to advance
human development and progress for all those
yearning for a better life, while also securing
the future of our planet and its ecosystems,
is one of the greatest challenges of our
time."
The Administrator emphasized
that inclusive and sustainable business
models, as well as strong and capable government
institutions and good policy, are key to
achieving transformative solutions for the
planet.
"But above that,
we need vision and commitment from all stakeholders,
and the passionate belief that we can transform
living standards while also sustaining our
environment. Developed countries have a
heavy responsibility for cleaning up their
act, and for supporting developing countries
to advance human development in sustainable
ways. We are all in this together."
Source: UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
