Nations clash over science at nature meet

Four countries accused of resisting UN-backed assessments

YEREVAN:

Political tensions are mounting in the final days of the United Nations biodiversity talks with a handful of countries - mainly Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina and Brazil - were accused of trying to weaken the science that underpins global nature policy.

The growing feud over the role of science has alarmed veteran negotiators and follows recent efforts by fossil fuel-reliant nations to delay reports by the IPCC – the global authority on climate change, a French government delegate at the COP17 summit in Yerevan, Armenia, said.

The delegate said four countries, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina and Brazil, were frustrating progress. The pushback is directed at two scientific assessments by the UN-backed IPBES biodiversity panel on the overlap between the nature and climate crises and the economic forces driving them.

Nearly 200 nations were due to agree how these landmark findings should guide efforts to protect nature but some countries "did not want to acknowledge them", the French delegate added.

Much of the dispute boils down to a few paragraphs of text in a draft agreement and whether countries should "welcome" or "take note" of the IPBES findings. The latter phrasing is considered far weaker in the language of UN negotiations, where every word is closely scrutinised.

Climate science has long been a flashpoint and the IPCC is currently deadlocked, as countries including Saudi Arabia and India push to delay publication of its next set of benchmark reports on global warming. The summit is due to end Friday (today) but a number of outstanding matters remain unresolved.