The second Tripartite Policy Dialogue on Biodiversity among Korea, China and Japan took place on October 11 in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province.

The dialogue is one of the sideline events at the 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP12) that began on October 6 and will last until October 17. It was organized so that the three nations could share information about each other's current policies and to review implementation of the convention.


Major agenda items that the three nations chose include are the implementation of the Aichi Targets, the Nagoya Protocol and trilateral cooperation on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an international platform for scientists and policy makers.

Adopted at the COP10 in Nagoya, in Aichi, Japan, in October 2010, the Aichi Targets are a set of 20 goals that are to be achieved by 2020 at the latest. The 20 targets include efforts to raise public awareness, to integrate biodiversity into national development strategies, to improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems and to prevent threatened species from becoming extinct.

During the dialogue, the three nations agreed to share their progress on the implementation of the mid-term strategies, as well as the focal points for research institutes to learn about each other's approaches and standards.

The three nations also exchanged opinions about the Nagoya Protocol and Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-Sharing (ABS), an international agreement aimed at sharing the benefits of the utilization of genetic resources in a fair and equitable manner.

Finally, dialogue participants recognized the importance of cooperation and information sharing to work toward the ratification and implementation of the protocol, and confirmed to strive to build capacity so that they could implement the protocol.




By Lee Seung-ah
Korea.net Staff Writer
(photos courtesy of the Ministry of Environment)
slee27@korea.kr