COP10.org

THE OPPORTUNITY

The UN COP10 Biodiversity Treaty Conference in Nagoya this October offers the global activist community an unprecedented opportunity to advance on many different fronts.

From rainforests to coral reefs, from plankton to primates, biodiversity refers to all that lives, and COP10 – the Conference Of Parties Number 10 has the potential to affect it all.

The UN's 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has now been ratified by 193 nations, who will be meeting in Nagoya for two weeks in October to decide the content of CBD 2.0. Their principal mandate is to halt the loss of biodiversity worldwide.

This opens some enormous doors.

COP10 Must Address Global Warming
COP10 offers us a chance to revisit and redeem Copenhagen because climate change is the biggest extinction driver on the planet. We can't reduce extinction rates without enforcing new greenhouse gas restrictions. Nagoya could succeed Kyoto as the next iconic city in climate policy history.

COP10 Must Address Deforestation and the Pillage of the Seas
Destruction of rainforests and woodland habitat is also a major extinction driver and a primary source of CO2. COP10 can help undo this harm with muscular new policies.

COP10 could also restrict overfishing, ban destructive fishing practices, and preserve at-risk species and ecosystems with tough new rules and far-reaching protected zones.

COP10 Must Address the Massive Subsidies to Big Oil/Coal/Agro-biz
COP10 can help radically reduce the billion dollar subsidies to fossil fuel industries and corporate agro-biz that threaten biodiversity (not to mention the climate and public health)

COP10 Must Address GMOs and Biopiracy
COP10's sibling MOP5 conference will decide what biosafety really means and what laws and limits should apply to the global distribution of bioengineered plants, crops and food.

COP10 itself must decide how Big Pharma will treat and pay the indigenous peoples whose plants and knowledge it has pirated, patented and profited from for so long.

In sum, never have so many critical issues been on a single conference table and never has so much been at stake.

Come to Nagoya if you can or find other ways to get involved.