UN species protection conference in Yerevan: power struggle for our livelihoods

The World Conservation Summit will have ended this weekend in Yerevan, Armenia. With a big deal or a big bang. Who cares? The reporter doesn't even dare to give his real name. Who reads anything about a “meeting of the member states of the Convention on Biological Diversity”?

Everyone likes nature. There is so much at stake: whether soils, forests and oceans can continue to store CO2 and thus stabilize the climate. Whether the soil remains fertile and fresh water is drinkable. Whether there will continue to be insects as pollinators and fish in the oceans, an important source of protein for around three billion people.

All of this was negotiated in Yerevan, in the abstract diplomatic English typical of the United Nations. The participants fight bitterly over formulations that hardly anyone outside the conference rooms understands. And which all too often are not worth the paper they are written on. Many negotiations on the Convention on Biological Diversity over the past 30 years were considered successes. They formulated important goals of nature conservation policy, identified dangers, recognized indigenous peoples as important actors and announced necessary funds.

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Afterwards, the ministers and officials, scientists, lobbyists and activists went back home and were faced with an insurmountable wall of economic and social systems that depend on growth (just like nature conservation itself, if it wants to redistribute more money from the north to the south every year) and consumption patterns that can hardly be changed. And yet the negotiation results from Yerevan are not irrelevant.

The power struggle over how to deal with our livelihoods takes place on many levels and in many places. They are connected and influence each other. Brazil, for example, was more on the side of the blocking states such as Saudi Arabia and Russia in the negotiations - but the election outcome in this global biodiversity hotspot is probably more important for their protection than the documents from Yerevan.

While the European Union is sharpening its environmental laws in its process to reduce bureaucracy, activists from the Bergisches Land in North Rhine-Westphalia are celebrating a success in court: in the small town of Ohl-Grünscheid, the Agger river is allowed to flow freely again and is no longer dammed for energy production. This is good for plants and animals. And good for people who rely on a balanced water balance.

The protection of ecosystems, the preservation of species and their genetic diversity (that is what biodiversity means) happens practically, on site, driven by committed people. The Yerevan negotiations can give them a boost. Or headwind, which usually awakens their powers of perseverance. The “Agger friends” deserve applause, their efforts have been acknowledged far too rarely. And the reporting on the World Nature Conservation Summit follows.