Proceedings of the Norway/UN Conference on Ecosystems and People: biodiversity for development: the road to 2010 and beyond

This report presents the conference proceedings, discussions and action from the fifth Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity held in Norway in 2007. It brought together some 250 participants, comprising scientists, managers, policy advisors, and NGO.

Through different presentations, open debates and discussions the conference tried to:

• illustrate the role of biodiversity in poverty alleviation and in reaching the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
• demonstrate the critical role of biodiversity and ecosystems in securing sustainable development 
• consider progress on the goal to achieve by 2010 “a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth” and look at efforts towards 2010 and beyond 
• present and consider difficult trade-offs that countries will have to make 
• provide insights and inspiration for enhanced implementation of the Strategic Plan for the CBD.
  

The main actions taken during the conference were a call of interaction to the meetings of the United Nations framework convention on Climate Change in Bali in December 2007 and the proposition of a 10 point action plan by the President of CBD COP-8.  The call concluded that the objectives of the Climate Change Convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the MDGs can only be achieved if there is close cooperation among the actors within the regimes.

The 10 point action plan to help achieve the Biodiveristy Targets of 2010 is as follows:

• completion of an international regime on access and benefit sharing
• adoption of a system to protect traditional knowledge  
• approval of an ambitious strategy for the mobilisation of financial resources for the implementation of the Convention 
• significant enlargement of the CBD financial mechanism in phase 5 of the Global Environment Facility 
• enhance mainstreaming of biodiversity in global, regional and national public policies as well as in the private sector 
• consolidation of sustainable forest management systems in public and private forests 
• creation of mechanisms at global and national scales that value the conservation of natural ecosystems 
• definition of global and national adaptation strategies on climate change which focuses on the consolidation of ecological corridors 
• consolidation of a system of global environmental governance.