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Biodiversity and climate, ASEAN’s next challenge
Indonesia's 2023 ASEAN chairmanship presents an opportunity to tweak the bloc's institutional structure to mainstream policies and actions on biodiversity preservation and climate change across all three ASEAN communities
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Climate activists hold a rally on Dec. 16, 2022 during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. (AFP/Lars Hagberg)
I
f there was a ranking of the most effective ASEAN institutions, the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) would probably top the chart.
After the agreement earlier this month in Montreal on the new Global Biodiversity Framework to replace the Aichi Framework, a very important document that was neglected and overlooked by the global community, we have another chance at saving and protecting our planet.
ASEAN member states can take the lead on this if they truly work as a team with a better structured Secretariat and some bottom-up innovations.
The COP15 Convention on Biological Diversity chaired by China, which was held in two parts with part 1 held in October 2021 in Kunming, China, and part 2 on Dec. 7-19, 2022 in Montreal, Canada, finally received due attention.
ASEAN issued two statements about the convention over the past two years, with the most recent one, a joint declaration issued by the bloc’s Cambodian chair on behalf of all members, issued on Dec. 12. Though devoid of clear commitments and targets, at least ASEAN showed its face at the negotiating table, a positive sign that augurs well for the future.
The ACB is the result of a successful partnership between ASEAN and the European Union and should become more and more central in this perspective, as it has the potential to become one of the world’s most respected research and advocacy centers on matters related to biodiversity.
But the challenges ahead for ACB are not only about gathering more resources, even if more resources would be instrumental to building the body of research it has produced so far, such as the ASEAN Biodiversity Outlook.
