1992 Biodiversity Convention, Sustainability & Indigenous Knowledge
1/4 We offer more video choices, namely please view as background either “a” & “b,” or “c” & “d,” or view all of them to build your scientific understanding of the problems, if you have time, plus read the written summary for “e.”
a. Sodhi, “Unearthing Biodiversity” (TED 09/13/18, 14:38) (Mr Wizard style, what is biodiversity?
b. Our Changing Climate, “Biodiversity is collapsing worldwide: Here’s why” (OCC, NCSE 05/20, 8:35) (generalized science ed, overlap between climate change and biodiversity)
c. Hadly, “Humans, Biodiversity and Habitat Loss” (HMII Bioactive Video 04/08/15, 33:04)(very sober looking undergrads, after the Stanford paleontology professor’s lecture)
d. Sukhdev, “Put a value on nature!” (TED 12/14/11, 16:31) (former banker’s economic approach to biodiversity and environmental services, with public versus private goods– now perhaps best characterized as the OECD view)
e. Living Planet Report 2020 (WWF, 2020) (read summary only for approaches to remediation of increasing loss of biological diversity)
2/4 Please read the texts of the
a. Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) as well as the related Cartagena (2003) and Nagoya (2014) Protocols
b. [Red hots may read as well the text of the CBD’s agricultural parallel in International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2009), plus the WTO TRIPS Agreement (1994) for IP rules aimed at private sector intellectual property, that may affect the CBD overlap]
3/4 Read
a. Blomquist, “Ratification Resisted: Understanding America’s Response to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1989-2002,” 32 Golden Gate U L Rev 493 (2002). This is a fairly close examination of the contemporary domestic political US view of Rio, compared to our early attention to Dr Mahatir as the developing country view of what was going on in 1992.
b. Gonzales & Monagle, Biodiversity and Intellectual Property Rights: Reviewing Intellectual Property Rights in Light of the Objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CIEL/WWF Joint Discussion Paper BW01-1, March 2001) (exploring policy issues involved in reconciling the CBD and TRIPS)
c. [For red hots, sample the various TEEB and OECD biodiversity publications, because these tend to be economically oriented and tend to make the business and economics case for sustainability, as opposed to the scientific or legal arguments.]
4/4 Take a look at the website of the 2012 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (“IPBES,” formally based in Bonn, Germany, and unlike the IPCC, not formally affiliated with the UN– as in the UNCCC– although it prepared a 2019 assessment, see the summary for policymakers, if you have time). The IPBES is known most recently for issuing a report in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic that increasing loss of biodiversity implies increasing threats to public health, including but not limited to more pandemics. Why had you probably heard nothing about it before reading about it here?
Copyright 2020–21 © David Linnan.