One hundred and ninety-six Governments have agreed to scale up investments
for sustainable development and harmonious coexistence of all life on Earth
by 2050. This was during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held on
November 17-29, 2018 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Addressing the convention,
His Excellency, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of
Egypt called for mainstreaming of biodiversity to all economic sectors in
order to conserve natural resources for the coming generations.

Dr. Christiana Pa?ca Palmer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations (UN)
Convention on Biological Diversity observed that since the convention came
to force 25 years ago, meaningful progress has been achieved in conservation
and sustainable use of biodiversity. Dr. Palmer, however, emphasized that
these successes are not enough to halt the ongoing loss of plant and animal
diversity on earth, urging all Governments to gear up efforts in conserving
biodiversity.

The two weeks of deliberations and multilateral negotiations closed with a
broad international agreement on reversing the global destruction of nature
and biodiversity loss threatening all forms of life on earth. To combat this
crisis, Governments agreed to accelerate action to achieve the Aichi
Biodiversity Targets, agreed in 2010. The meeting also agreed on a
comprehensive and participatory process for developing the post-2020 global
biodiversity framework anticipated to be agreed upon at the next UN
conference in Beijing in 2020.

The ISAAA delegation participated in the meetings, making statements on
biosafety items in the conference agenda. ISAAA also co-hosted a side event
on LMOs, synthetic biology and digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic
resources. The event was co-organized by the Alliance for Science (AfS), the
German Association of Synthetic Biology, International Genetically
Engineered Machine (iGEM), Public Research and Regulation Initiative (PRRI),
and SynBio Africa.



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