IISD Reporting Services Blog

Linkages Update #115 - Friday, 17 October 2008

POPRC members and observers met in plenary throughout the week.

 

POPRC CONVENES LAST MEETING BEFORE COP4

Geneva, 17 October—The Fourth Meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutant Review Committee (POPRC4) has convened from 13-17 October 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland. Delegates considered, among other agenda items: a draft risk profile for short-chained chlorinated paraffins; proposals to list endosulfan and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) under Annexes A, B or C of the Convention; new information on perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS); and toxic interactions between POPs. This was the Committee's final meeting prior to COP4, which will be held in Geneva in early May 2009.

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Editor’s Note #115 - Linkages Update - Friday, 17 October 2008

Lynn Wagner, Ph.D., Editor, Linkages Update and MEA Bulletin

 

The final countdown to the Poznan Climate Change Conference is on.

Poland has just hosted an informal meeting of environmental ministers in Warsaw, as did Indonesia in Bogor, Indonesia, in October 2007, a month before the December 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference. In September, Argentina hosted the “El Calafate Southern Lights Dialogue,” an informal meeting of ministers and high-level government officials. This was the fourth meeting in a series that held its last meeting in June 2007, in Sweden for the “Midnight Sun Dialogue on Climate Change,” in the lead-up to Bali.

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Linkages Update #114 - Thursday, 2 October 2008

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed delegates during the High-level Meeting on Africa’s Development Needs (UN Photo/Marco Castro)

 

HIGH-LEVEL EVENT ON AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT NEEDS ADOPTS POLITICAL DECLARATION 

New York, 23 September—The High-Level Meeting on Africa’s Development Needs, which took place at UN headquarters on 22 September 2008, ended with the adoption of a resolution entitled “Political Declaration on Africa’s Development Needs.” In the resolution, leaders from Africa expressed their determination to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and reaffirmed that NEPAD provides an agreed foundation. They noted that this framework can only be implemented if the international community fulfills its commitments to tackle the myriad challenges faced by Africa.

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Editor’s Note #114 - Linkages Update - Thursday, 2 October 2008

Lynn Wagner, Ph.D., Editor, Linkages Update and MEA Bulletin

 

Impressive financial commitments have dominated the news this past week.

While the US$700 billion US domestic economic bailout plan overshadowed most other news, an otherwise notable US$16 billion in new commitments were announced on 25 September, during the High-Level Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In his speech to the opening of the General Debate of the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly two days before the High-Level meeting, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlighted the global food, energy and financial crises, as well as the challenge of climate change, and emphasized the need for global leadership and solutions. He called on UN member States to be ambitious and concrete in their commitments to achieve the MDGs. The resulting pledges included US$1.6 billion to bolster food security, a new initiative called “Purchase for Progress,” which will buy surplus crops directly from poor farmers in Africa and Central America, over $750 million to address climate change, and commitments to intensify efforts to slow deforestation.

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Linkages Update #113 - Thursday, 18 September 2008

L-R: Sergey Dereliev, AEWA Secretariat; Bert Lenten, AEWA Executive Secretary; Vice-Chair Abdoulaye N’Diaye, Senegal; Vice-Chair Olivier Biber, Switzerland; and Tim Jones, report writer

 

MIGRATORY WATERBIRD CONFERENCE CONVENES IN MADAGASCAR

 

Antananarivo, 18 September—The fourth Meeting of the Parties (MOP4) to the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, also known as the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA), is meeting from 15-19 September 2008, in Antananarivo, Madagascar. The MOP4 agenda includes the implementation of the Agreement and Action Plan, International Implementation Priorities 2006-2008, Communication Strategy, and African-Eurasian Flyways Global Environment Facility (GEF) Project.

 

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Editor’s Note #113 - Linkages Update - Thursday, 18 September 2008

Lynn Wagner, Ph.D., Editor, Linkages Update and MEA Bulletin

 

In the coming week, we will closely watch the two high level events that will accompany the opening of the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly, with our trademark reports being produced at both the High Level Meeting on Africa’s Development Needs and the High Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals, as well as at selected partnership side events.

 

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Linkages Update #112 - Thursday, 4 September 2008

Ministers and Heads of Delegation in a group photo after the official opening of the ministerial segment.

 

UNEP AND WHO HOLD CONFERENCE ON HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT IN AFRICA

 

Libreville, 30 August—The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) organized the First Inter-ministerial Conference on Health and Environment in Africa, from 26-29 August 2008, in Libreville, Gabon. The conference, which sought to catalyze the reduction of environmental threats to health, closed with the adoption of the Libreville Declaration which, inter alia, called on WHO and UNEP to establish a network for addressing communicable and non-communicable diseases.

 

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Editor’s Note #112 - Linkages Update - Thursday, 4 September 2008

Lynn Wagner, Ph.D., Editor, Linkages Update and MEA Bulletin

As the relatively slow Northern summer comes to an end, the “busy season” is once more upon us.

With negotiators moving toward the half-way point between the December 2007 adoption of the Bali Roadmap and agreement on a post-2012 climate change agreement in December 2009, it may be fitting that this semester began with a celebration of what has been accomplished along with reminders of what remains to be done. The 20th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), marked on 31 August 2008, brought speeches recalling the role that the IPCC’s four Assessment Reports have played in advancing international climate change policy, and highlighting the need for negotiations to move more quickly to ensure that a post-2012 climate change agreement is reached in Copenhagen in December 2009. The next official negotiating session for these talks will be in December 2008, in Poznan, Poland, although decision makers will have a number of chances to exchange positions and consider options before that meeting opens. The Southern Lights Dialogue will offer one such opportunity in the coming weeks, with ministers from twenty-five countries gathering in Argentina from 15-18 September, to informally exchange ideas on the evolving post-2012 climate change negotiations.

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Linkages Update #111 - Thursday, 7 August 2008

SC Chair Cristian Maquieira and Jonathan Barzdo, CITES Secretariat

CITES STANDING COMMITTEE CONCLUDES, DESIGNATES CHINA AS AN IVORY TRADING PARTNER

Geneva, 19 July—The 57th meeting of the Standing Committee (SC) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which convened in Geneva, Switzerland, from 14-18 July 2008, adopted a number of recommendations, including on: development of indicators; costed programme of work for 2009-2011; review of the status of the elephant, trade in its specimens and the impact of the legal trade; and designation of China as an ivory trading partner. The Committee also established many intersessional working groups to carry out work on, inter alia: CITES and livelihoods; introduction from the sea; the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme; decision-making mechanism for authorizing ivory trade; intensive operations breeding tigers on a commercial scale; review of the scientific committees; cooperation between parties and promotion of multilateral measures; trade in crocodilian specimens; and purpose codes on CITES permits and certificates. These working groups are expected to report back to the next meeting of the Standing Committee in July 2009.

Read the issue #111 of Linkages Update

Editor’s Note #111 - Linkages Update - Thursday, 7 August 2008

Lynn Wagner, Ph.D., Editor, Linkages Update and MEA Bulletin

Climate change events will no doubt continue to command center stage as the sustainable development calendar picks up the pace in the coming weeks, but the final quarter of 2008 also will bring a number of key events focused on the development agenda that should not be overlooked.

Following closely on the heels of the 21-27 August 2008 meetings in Accra, Ghana, of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action and Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol, the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness will convene in Accra from 2-4 September. This High Level Forum is expected to adopt an Accra Agenda for Action, which will seek to evaluate the targets that were agreed in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and consider emerging aid effectiveness issues that have arisen since 2005.

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