Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 19 • 28th October 2005

CBD Experts Panel on Liability and Redress Makes Progress

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A 12-14 October meeting of legal and technical experts on liability and redress within Article 14(2) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was able to move beyond defining the legal elements of liability and redress to tackling technical aspects. The expert panel, meeting in Montreal, Canada, was mandated to clarify responsibility for damage to biological diversity, except where such liability is a purely internal matter, including working on basic concepts and developing definitions; ways to incorporate biodiversity into pre-existing liability and redress regimes; creating a liability and redress regime within the CBD; analysing activities and situations that contribute to damage to biological diversity; and preventive measures. The meeting started with a report from the Chair of the Cartagena Protocol’s Open-ended Ad-Hoc Working Group on Liability and Redress, who noted that the group at its 25-27 May meeting had struggled to define and put a value to damage to biological diversity in the context of the Protocol, an issue that also came up during the October meeting as a challenge for discussions within the CBD.

However, the CBD experts’ group called into question its mandate, stating that “it may be premature at this time to draw a conclusion that an international regime focused on damage to biodiversity should either be developed or not developed”. Particularly difficult are attempts to define responsibility and extent of damage to biodiversity in the context of international trade, limited-liability corporations and potentially lax domestic legislation. Nevertheless, the meeting report highlighted the need for capacity building at the national level on liability and redress, suggesting it would be key to developing much-needed technical elements of the mandate such as defining measurements, establishing baseline indications and implementing a national laws. The meeting finished positively owing largely to this national emphasis, suggesting that the group will need to clarify the CBD’s policy role on liability and redress in the future.

The legal and technical experts report is available online at http://www.biodiv.org/doc/meetings/cop/cop-08/official/cop-08-27-add3-en.pdf.

ICTSD Reporting; “Report Of The Group Of Legal And Technical Experts On Liability and Redress in the Context of Paragraph 2 of Article 14 of the Convention on Biological Diversity,” UNEP/CBD/COP/8/27/Add.3, 18 October 2005.