Despite gridlocked talks over finance and little advancement on key elements on the agenda, this year’s U.N. biodiversity conference, or COP16, was considered a success for some Indigenous peoples and local community (IP and LC) delegates who obtained historic inclusion of their rights within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, many groups were also left disappointed due to the lack of progress on resource mobilization and the monitoring framework to achieve the global biodiversity goals and targets. “The most significant achievement of COP16 was undoubtedly the historic approval of the Article 8(j) subsidiary body,” Wara Iris Ruiz Condori, from the Aymara peoples of Bolivia and advocacy project coordinator at the Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI), told Mongabay. “This milestone marks a momentous step towards the formal recognition of the ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities.” After a roughly 12-hour meeting, COP16 was suspended in the early hours of Nov. 2 due to many representatives leaving the conference without a decision on resource mobilization. However, many Indigenous peoples and local communities left pleased with the approval of Article 8(j) and the ‘Cali Fund’. The latter is the first-ever global fund to ensure that the benefits generated through the commercial use of Digital Sequencing Information (DSI) are shared fairly with the people living where the resources were discovered, such as Indigenous peoples. While the biodiversity framework and the decisions at the conference are not legally binding, delegates cheered the strong language in agreements around inclusion and benefits to Indigenous…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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