Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: framing the problem of biodiversity loss
- PART I CONCEPTUALISING DIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS
- PART II INTEGRATING ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE ANALYSIS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS
- PART III ECONOMIC ISSUES
- 7 Economic growth and the environment
- 8 The international regulation of biodiversity decline: optional policy and evolutionary product
- 9 Policies to control tropical deforestation: trade interventions versus transfers
- 10 On biodiversity conservation
- PART IV CONCLUSIONS
- References
- Index
10 - On biodiversity conservation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: framing the problem of biodiversity loss
- PART I CONCEPTUALISING DIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS
- PART II INTEGRATING ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE ANALYSIS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS
- PART III ECONOMIC ISSUES
- 7 Economic growth and the environment
- 8 The international regulation of biodiversity decline: optional policy and evolutionary product
- 9 Policies to control tropical deforestation: trade interventions versus transfers
- 10 On biodiversity conservation
- PART IV CONCLUSIONS
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In an early round of the negotiations on the Convention on Biological Diversity, a number of fundamental principles were seen to guide achievement of the objectives of the Convention. The first two of these were, “The conservation of biological diversity is a [matter of] common concern of all humankind and requires cooperation by Contracting Parties,” and “The Contracting Parties have as States the sovereign right to exploit their own biological resources pursuant to their own environmental policies. …! Though these principles were subsequently edited, they convey the essential message that biological diversity is a global public good, that all countries can potentially be made better off by cooperating, but that cooperation will only succeed if individual countries are made better off. These principles also beg the questions: How should countries exploit their own biological resources? and How can cooperation be sustained by the Convention?
Importantly, the obligations of the final Convention apply unequally between “developed” and “developing” countries. Paragraph 4 of Article 20 reads:
The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account the fact that economic and social development and eradication of poverty are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biodiversity LossEconomic and Ecological Issues, pp. 283 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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