International Implementation

International Committee on Biodiversity

Although biodiversity is a region-centered issue, the coordination of a worldwide direction to mitigating biodiversity loss is an international issue that will require collaboration through a higher body. Therefore we propose that an international body be created under the U.N. called the International Committee on Biodiversity (ICB).

Justification

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was a specific convention and treaty created in 1992 that set goals for progress in mitigating the biodiversity crisis by 2010. Few, if any of those goals have been met. Working Groups that review implementation of the convention have met since 2010 and most recently in 2007 and 2010 created reports outlining reasons for lack of implementation including (Cooper 2010):

In February of 2010, having realized that the 2010 goals had not been met, the Convention met again to discuss a post-2010 plan. They created a new long-term vision for 2050 and new mission for 2020 that aims to emphasize quantifiable sub-targets and the practical side of implementation which was largely missing from the 1992 Convention. Many of these goals align with the overall plan this class has created. Our overall plan also greatly increases the specificity of mechanisms to support implementation, educational outreach programs, and quantitative metrics that clearly measure success.

However, the Convention does not actually have implementation power and lacks the ability to provide funding to countries for their projects. We believe that this greatly hinders the potential for any collective international and multilateral action on the biodiversity crisis. An International Committee on Biodiversity, or ICB, is necessary because the ability to allocate funding and facilitate international policy is critical to a global movement to control biodiversity loss promote worldwide sustainable living. Although the goals we have independently created overlap with the broad targets of the post-2010 plan, the presence of an international committee will enable our plan to create a unified direction toward national strategy implementations.

There are four main themes that define the role of the ICB: