After the CBD-UNESCO conference concluded on June 10th, Harry Jonas and Holly Shrumm (Natural Justice) left Montreal concerned with the process that led to the development of a draft CBD-UNESCO joint programme of work on biological and cultural diversity. The draft that was presented to plenary on Thursday afternoon contained laudable objectives, but lacked the specific actions to promote its aims. A number of participants raised this issue and highlighted that the actions appeared to be set up as predominantly UNESCO-managed desktop studies and would not support the community-based implementation of the CBD and of UNESCO’s culture-related conventions. Despite several interventions about this concern, the CBD and UNESCO co-chairs claimed that there was not enough time to fully consider them and did not include them in the draft text. Natural Justice has subsequently been included in a small drafting team to provide additional input to the programme of work, which will be forwarded for consideration as a draft decision to the CBD Conference of Parties in October in Nagoya.
