It has been nearly a year since 193 nations met in Nagoya, Japan, to agree on a set of strategic plans to conserve global biodiversity, and more than six months since one of those agreements was opened for signature and ratification by the participating nations.
The Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement aimed at ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources that contribute to biodiversity. It's primary purpose is to protect developing countries from the misappropriation of their native biological diversity.
The Nagoya Protocol will not take effect unless 50 nations sign the agreement by February 1, 2012. Currently, only 42 nations have signed. The United States is not one of them.
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The US government is more or less controlled by big business. Just watch dvds like “Inside Job” and “Who killed the electric car”. Oil business, car maintenance, and others stand to lose if US citizens would tighten belts too much too quickly. So the policy is: give the appearance of grave concern, but meanwhile keep fighting for cheap oil until the last drop!
Maybe it’s because the US is in a deep recession?
Has it occurred to any of you self-centred wild-eyed environmentalists that Americans have other priorities?
And what’s so wrong with the oil business? What fuels the energy to produce the electricity to run the electric car?
Think ‘Solendra’, folks!
The Nagoya Protocol “is aimed at preventing large corporations from monopolizing the billion-dollar benefits derived from genetic resources and forcing them to share those benefits with developing nations” Did you read this? What does the current recession have to do with looking to the future of the planet and what will be left to our our descendants? and who will be controlling it? it appears to me that this is about sharing.
Pete: If humanity wants to survive we must address the health and well-being of Nature and our Environment, for we depend on Her every moment of every day for our own well being and survival. There is nothing we humans source that does not originate in the natural world and if we want to keep on going we will have to address the fact that…without Nature we do not exist. This is not an issue of environmentalists, it is however about priorities. We are consuming faster than Nature can regenerate and poisoning, altering the natural balance by what we are extracting, destroying and depleting (e.g. oceans, soils, deforestation) Everything is interconnected. Once we humans return to embrace and nurture the source of our existence, perhaps we will have a new economy and plenty of jobs in our restorations efforts.
Perhaps America realizes that if humans havent even discovered all of the speacies on earth, then there is not a problem with biodiversity? Besides, we have other issues of more importance to us.
Pete and Aize, none of the international agreements reached at the Nagoya conference last year, including the Nagoya Protocol, have anything specific to do with oil. Sure, oil drilling can have an impact on various species and their habitats, but the Nagoya Protocol is aimed at preventing powerful multinational corporations from exploiting the genetics of species in developing countries without sharing the benefits.
Patrick, with species disappearing at roughly 1,000 times the natural rate, there aren’t many issues to humans of any nation than keeping their own house (i.e, Planet Earth) in order. When ecosystems are out of balance, bad things happen, and many of those bad things happen to people. For the sake of our own well-being, we need to keep the planet healthy.
Species are not being lost at anywhere near the rate commonly claimed: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/full/nature09985.html
OTOH- loss of habitat to human encroachment as a growing population seeks Lebensraum is the biggest problem facing the environment. 3rd world countries don’t need a treaty, they need a secure source of food, changes in attitude toward a hi birth rate and a stable political/economic situation that doesn’t demand a hi birth rate for survival.
I’m not even sure what this meddling treaty involves except another chance for the New World Order Socialists to influence the flow of wealth. What exactly is “genetic wealth?” If the genetic wealth of the poor countries is not yet lost, and if that genetic wealth is so valuable, then why are they still poor? And how will “saving it” make them any richer?
If they need only another 8 votes out of the remaining 151 nations, then the US vote is hardly important to the treaty. Like the Kyoto Treaty, this is merely a grandstand play that no one has any intention of honoring.
One important point to consider is that the US cannot sign the Nagoya Protocol until it becomes a Party to its parent treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD is the most comprehensive agreement on biodiversity, adopted in 1992 to conserve biodiversity and promote its sustainable use and the equitable sharing of benefits resulting from its use. It has a near universal membership, with 193 Parties. The US signed but has not ratified the CBD.
The U.S.A. make me sick to my stomach. They are one of the biggest and most powerful counties in the world yet they REFUSED to sign the old Kyoto Report which was vitally imporant and now they refuse to sign this new Nagoya report. What the hell is wrong with them? They’re also THE biggest culprit’s when it comes to fossil fuels and excessive use of pesticides etc. etc. yet they choose to not conform or cut down on factory emissions etc. etc. Sick to my stomach…… They killed off the Apaches and the few they captured ended up becoming alcoholics and worse. They lost their freedom, their land and there is soooo much the White man/honky could learn from red skinned people who lived off the land and never abused or detroyed it the way the white man did and continues to do. Shame on you you greedy power hungry money hungry fat cat’s!!!!!