IISD/ENB Summary Meeting Reports

Despite phasing out 98% of ozone depleting substances worldwide relative to a 1990 baseline and making major inroads in avoiding catastrophic climate change, parties grappled with recent scientific findings, whether and how to build on the Protocol’s success to tackle

The meeting successfully highlighted the importance of transboundary water cooperation, welcomed Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Togo as new Parties, and saw the signing of the Ministerial Declaration on the Senegalo-Mauritanian Aquifer Basin by ministers from The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, and Senegal.

COP18 highlighted the increasing pressures on CITES as an instrument to counter the rising scale of biodiversity loss, as parties struggled to address stresses other than trade on wildlife populations, including habitat loss, disease outbreaks, and human-wildlife conflict. These are

COP13 adopted 25 resolutions, including on a language strategy with a step-by-step plan to add Arabic as the fourth Convention language, gender, peatlands, blue carbon ecosystems, sustainable urbanization, agriculture, intertidal wetlands, wetlands in West Asia, and Arctic and sub-Arctic wetlands

Throughout the meeting, many speakers highlighted the importance of further expanding the Water Convention and making its tools globally available to enable cooperation and effective water management. MOP8 addressed many substantive issues, including reporting under the Convention and SDG indicator