Biodiversity, Climate Change Policy On Convergent Roads, Paper Says

Biodiversity and climate change issues are coming together under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), according to a new working paper from the University of Edinburgh.

The CBD is engaged in questions relating to climate change, it found. In particular, the CBD has progressively addressed legal and policy implications of the impacts on biodiversity of climate change, as well as mitigation and adaptation measures.

The author, Elisa Morgera, a lecturer in European environmental law at the University of Edinburgh School of Law, analysed the links between biodiversity loss and climate change, and reviewed the main climate change-related outcomes of the 10th CBD Conference of the Parties (COP), in October 2010.

According to Morgera, the CBD “has been steadily working on climate-change-related issues since its seventh meeting in 2004.” At COP 10, delegates agreed on increased cooperation between the CBD and the international climate change regime, in particular with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

However, “the ultimate value of the developments under the CBD related to climate change rests with the systematic application at all levels of environmental governance of its guidelines aimed at ensuring that climate change measures are environmentally, socially, and culturally sustainable,” the paper said.