New Delhi, Oct.22 (ANI): Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Monday termed the UN Biodiversity Convention a success, and added that the world is pledging more money to protect biodiversity.
The U.N. Convention on Biodiversity started in Hyderabad on October 8, and concluded on October 19.
Over 200 countries participated in the convention, and delegates deliberated over environment-friendly situations that would suit current times.
Natarajan congratulated the officers involved in the convention for having made it a success due to flawless logistics.
"I think before I come to the main technical aspects of the successful conclusion of the convention, the important issue I would like to flag is that 15 to 20,000 in total arrived in the city of Hyderabad, and I would like to congratulate all our officers, who had flawless logistics, and it was because of the flawless logistics, that the conference was successfully organised," she said.
Natarajan said the outcome of the conference was the ratification of the Nagoya protocol and achieving the biodiversity targets.
"The outcome of the conference, as I said right in my opening speech, on the 8th of October that the two legs, main pillars which was the ratification of the Nagoya protocol and also achieving the biodiversity targets had already been done in Japan and now the important outcome that we were looking for is to achieve resource mobilisation, which was left undone in Japan," she said.
Natarajan added that developed countries have agreed to double funding to support efforts in developing states towards meeting the internationally-agreed biodiversity targets, and the main goals of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (SPB) 2011-2020.
"India made sure that this difficult outcome, especially in the time of economic recession was achieved with a huge degree of consensus. In fact, total consensus. Of course, one or two countries expressed their reservation. However, they specifically expressed that they were not blocking. Therefore, it was a total consensus and in these difficult economic times, make parties developed countries commit international financial flows for biodiversity to double international financial flows for biodiversity by 2015," she said.
The world's urban areas will more than double in size by 2030, presenting an opportunity to build greener and healthier cities, a U.N. study showed on Monday.
Simple planning measures such as more parks, trees or roof gardens could make cities less polluted and help protect plants and animals, especially in emerging nations led by China and India where city growth will be fastest, it said. (ANI)