At its meeting in Brussels on 3 March 2008, the Environment Council adopted conclusions with a view to the ninth ordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to be held from 19 to 30 May 2008 in Bonn, Germany, preceded by a meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, from 12 to 16 May.

In its conclusions, the Council stressed the need to make every effort to achieve the objective, adopted by the Parties to the Convention, of significantly reducing the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. It also affirmed that the European Union, for its part, maintains the commitment, made at the Göteborg European Council meeting in June 2001, of halting biodiversity loss on its territory by 2010.

The Council emphasised the necessity of achieving greater synergies between climate-change and biodiversity policies. It also stressed the urgent need for an EU strategy on invasive alien species and an effective early warning system.

The Environment Ministers of the EU's 27 Member States also highlighted the problem of the growing use of food and non-food crops to produce bioenergy and biofuels, which could hasten the loss of agricultural biodiversity and jeopardise food security. As regards the dangers resulting from transboundary movements of living modified organisms (LMOs), the Council called for the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol to adopt, at their meeting in Bonn, international rules and procedures in the field of liability and redress for damage resulting from such movements.

The CBD, which was adopted in June 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and entered into force in December 1993, now has 190 signatory Parties. The European Union is a Party to both the Convention and the Cartagena Protocol, which was adopted within the framework of the CBD in January 2000, with the aim of ensuring that transboundary movements of LMOs do not adversely affect biological diversity or human health.

Further information:
Council press release  (pdf)