page 05

convention on biodiversity

dangerous union of economy and ecology

simone lovera, foei

big on words, thin on promises
The annotated agenda for the next UN biodiversity summit is a full 36 pages, comprehensiveness indicative of both the breadth of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the almost infinite living variety it pretends to protect.

The attendees of the April 2002 meetings of the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6) to the CBD will discuss a broad range of issues relevant to biodiversity protection. Topics on the agenda include illegal logging, protecting Indigenous Peoples' traditional knowledge, safeguarding nations' rights to choose their own biotechnology policy, and mitigating the impacts of invasive species.

greatest riches unsaved
Biological diversity can be described as the variety contained in all life forms on this planet. Despite the ratification of the CBD by more than 165 countries, important habitats of high biodiversity such as tropical forests and coral reefs are still vanishing at an alarming rate. An estimated one third of global biodiversity has been lost since 1970, according to WWF's Living Planet Report 2000.

On the human front, the rural poor are the main victims of this loss. Farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, and Indigenous and other forest peoples are facing rapid economic, social and cultural impoverishment as the basic stock of their livelihood is depleted. They are being forced to subsist without seeds, fertile land, water, food, fish stocks and the numerous goods and services provided to them by forests. There is no life without biodiversity.

true causes overlooked
In this issue, Farah Sofa of FoE Indonesia describes how even a moratorium on the export of logs will not reduce deforestation and forest degradation in her country if root causes are ignored (see page 16). Biodiversity policy has failed over the past decades, mainly because it continues to focus on relatively marginal measures such as the establishment of protected areas. Such measures combat the symptoms, not the underlying causes of biodiversity loss.

big, dangerous, and out of control
These underlying causes are deeply rooted in the macro-economic development model of corporate-led globalization. It promotes enterprises that are the main drivers of biodiversity loss: the large-scale, export-oriented agricultural industry; commercial logging companies; fish-factory fleets; and the mining industry.

These industries are fostered and actively promoted through trade liberalization and other forms of corporate-led globalization. Unchecked by effective national or international regulation, they are able to plunder the earth's resources, while the communities that have used and lived in harmony with these resources for generations are left with a ravaged earth. The outcomes of the latest World Trade Organization negotiations in Doha last November will only exacerbate this plundering, because they actively promote export-oriented economic models and the further commercialization of biodiversity.

competition not a solution
Competition as a model for biodiversity conservation ignores the glaring power imbalances between large corporations that reap profits from these resources and the Indigenous Peoples who are the caretakers of this genetic wealth, as Isaac Rojas of FoE Costa Rica relates in this issue . The new carbon market created by the Kyoto Protocol induces local people to sell their lands for plantation development and other destructive carbon sequestration projects. This has already proven to be an equation for inequity and destruction.

corporations must adapt
Hildebrando Velez's article (see page 14) on community-based forest management in Colombia clearly shows, community-based biodiversity conservation is not about adapting community enterprise to the big business of biodiversity exploitation. It is about adapting economic and social models to the real nature of biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods.