Highlighted by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a species at risk, the New Zealand fur seal is now restricted to breeding on a small group of islands off the South coast of Tasmania where approximately 100 pups are born each year.
Credit: Ministry for the Environment New Zealand/Dick Veitch
NAGOYA: U.N. talks aimed at brokering a deal to protect the world's diminishing natural resources have made little progress, green groups said ahead of the summit's crucial second phase starting next week.
The 12 days of negotiations in the central Japanese city of Nagoya are aimed at securing agreement on how to stop the rapid loss of the world's plant and animal species, as well as their habitats.
But after the first week environment groups said the conference was becoming bogged down in the same kind of acrimony between developed and developing nations that have plagued UN climate change negotiations.
Best case scenario
"What we need to see is a global alliance to protect life on earth but what we have seen so far are alarming divisions and a hardening of positions," WWF international director general Jim Leape said.
In a best-case scenario, the negotiations would wrap up at the end of the week with a set of agreed targets for slowing the dramatic rate of biodiversity loss by 2020.
There would also be a deal on how developed countries would provide poor ones with funding to protect the world's natural habitats, plus an agreement on how to equitably share genetic resources.
Brazil’s crucial stand-off
However, the WWF and other environment groups monitoring the event said rich and poor nations were at loggerheads over many aspects of the potential agreement.
In one crucial stand-off, Brazil was insisting there would be no overarching deal unless there was agreement on how to share the benefits of genetic resources such as wild plants from forests that are used to make medicines.
Developing countries, which have most of these genetic riches, want an ‘equitable share’ of the profits Western companies enjoy from the natural resources.
Heading the way of Copenhagen climate change talks?
Some of the sticking points on this issue are determining exactly which resources would be included and whether a potential agreement would be retroactive.
Greenpeace policy advisor Nathalie Rey said the negotiations were in danger of heading the same way as climate change talks in Copenhagen last year, when world leaders failed to secure a binding agreement to tackle global warming.
