IPBES is up and running – or the “Joy” of Rules and
Procedures
Good things
first. In a knowledgeable and spirited speech Achim Steiner, the UNEP executive
director, opened IPBES-1. His evident joy was only topped by the interim Chair Alfred Apau Oteng Yeboah
of Ghana who could not stop smiling about being called the
first (interim) Chair of IPBES. Reason for his interim chairship is the fact
that there are two candidates for the actual position: Zakri Abdul Hamid of Malaysia, nominated by the Asia-Pacific states and
backed by the G77 and China. And Robert T. Watson of the UK, known for his long
standing commitment within the IPCC which he chaired between 1997 and 2002.
Watson was nominated by Western Europe and other States. As this is being written
the candidates and the so far elected bureau members sit together to sort out
the position of chair/co-chair. Let’s see whether they come to an agreement by
the second session this afternoon. Up for election are also the 25 members of
the MEP (Multidisciplinary Expert Panel). Each of the five UN regions is
eligible to sent 5 experts to this panel that will be responsible for the
scientific process of IPBES. An interesting curiosity in this election process
is the fact that the Eastern European States so far have only nominated three persons for the 5
positions – all of whom come from Hungary. You start wondering where the wealth
of qualified scientists or more generally “knowledge-holders” are from
Eastern-Europe. So if anyone of our members is interested – maybe you should
contact your country representative and put your hat in the ring.
Besides election matters members and observers had the chance to give
general comments to the plenary today. As reported yesterday, the collected
stakeholders agreed on an initial statement that was given to the plenary today
and will be downloadable from the IPBES webpage. The stakeholder process that
led to this statement was well organised by IUCN and ICSU – but starting the
next days we will certainly discuss how we will organise ourselves in the
future and who will have a mandate to represent the stakeholders in the future
or if that is at all feasible.
Of course the statements of the member states also gave a first hint
where IPBES is headed. While the members one after another announced that they
highly value stakeholder involvement – you start wondering why on the issue of
accepting stakeholders so many thought that a consensus procedure would be a
good rule in this context. In essence that means that every member state can
veto any particular stakeholder as an observer. Needless to say, that this
would be a severe blow in the face of an open and transparent stakeholder
process and thus for the acceptance of IPBES.
It seems generally very debatable whether consensus rule in a body that
will oversee the production of scientific reports on the biodiversity crisis is
a good idea but I guess it was not all that surprising that almost all members
that spoke out on the topic today were strongly favouring consensus as the rule
of vote to apply for IPBES. The power and irony of this set in when Bolivia
also spoke out in strong support of a consensus rule right before they started
reading their list of why, how and when they will oppose the current approach
to IPBES. It for sure will make for some good drama in the coming days.
Disregarding whether one agrees with Bolivia’s position on the IPBES or not –
their statement sure has the potential to make some of the other member states
second guess their position towards consensus rule.
—Lars Opgenoorth
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