14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

The last meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP14) took place in November 2018 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, under the heading “Investing in biodiversity for people and planet”.

During the conference, a broad range of thematic and technical issues were negotiated. In addition to the effectiveness of protected areas, these issues included, for instance, the relationship of biodiversity and climate change and cooperation between the convention and other international environmental agreements and organisations. A total of almost 40 decisions and agreements were made at the conference.

The 196 contracting parties adopted, among other things, the plan of action for the conservation and sustainable use of pollinators. This plan is intended to integrate the conservation of insects and other pollinators into the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the international chemical conventions. Furthermore, financial resources are to be made available for the contracting parties to support the development of national insect conservation programmes. The contracting parties also declared regions in the Baltic Sea, Caspian Sea and the Black Sea as biologically significant marine areas. This is regarded as an important step towards establishing more marine protected areas and counteracting the loss of marine biodiversity.

In the Sharm El Sheikh declaration, the governments of the contracting parties committed themselves to jointly reinforce efforts to combat biodiversity loss and work towards integrating biological diversity in all fields and sectors.

Because the Aichi Biodiversity Targets expire in 2020, a new global biodiversity framework is to be adopted at the next COP (COP15) in Kunming. To achieve this, a working group was set up at COP14 to support the development of this new framework and involve various stakeholders in this process. During COP15 in October 2020, Germany will hold the EU Council Presidency and will thus be responsible for the coordination of EU member states in Kunming.