Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biosphere - WBGU

382 K Recommendations for action
erty Rights (TRIPS). The Council recommends supporting
implementation of Art. 8(j) by orienting the
efforts under the auspices of development cooperation
accordingly (support for the sectoral project of
the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit,
GTZ) and addressing questions relating to alternative
protection systems for traditional knowledge in
the deliberations over international standards for
access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing.
K 2.2
Governments and government institutions
K 2.2.1
Improving national implementation and strategic
capabilities
The cross-sectoral character of the CBD calls for an
integrational strategy of implementation in the contracting
countries. The objectives of the Convention
should for instance be incorporated into traditional
approaches to protect nature and species and these
should be expanded in the case of the biosphere with
the addition of sustainable use concepts.The Council
considers development of a national strategy for
Germany (WBGU, 1996), building on Germany’s
national report from 1998, still to be appropriate and
beyond that it aims to develop sectoral biodiversity
strategies. This would especially mean incorporating
the policy areas of agriculture, forestry, fisheries,
research and the further development of biodiversity
policy in the areas of biotechnology, economic policy,
fiscal policy and development cooperation. The Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
(BMZ) has already risen to this challenge; in
1997 it developed a sectoral concept titled ‘Preserving
biological diversity through nature conservation’.
The cross-sectoral character of the Convention calls
for continual coordination between the ministries as
well as between the federal, regional and municipal
levels. The Council therefore recommends establishing
an ‘Interministerial Working Group on Biodiversity
policy’, in which all agencies and departments
involved in the development of a sustainable policy
on biodiversity would be represented.
K 2.2.2
Advancing the process of giving substantive form
to the ecosystem approach
The ecosystem approach is an integrational concept
for the implementation of the CBD, to which for
example many programmes of work and decisions
from the COPs refer.This approach is also an important
basis for bioregional management (Section
E 3.9). It is currently being used in the CBD, but without
there being a commonly shared sense of its substance.
Since the ecosystem approach was incorporated
into the Convention without first receiving the
all-clear from the scientific committee of the CBD
(SBSTTA) and, in many instances, has proven to be a
cause of irritation among various players, a scientific
grounding to the approach is more necessary than
ever.As a matter of priority the Council recommends
moving forward with the process of giving substance
to this concept and for use to be made of the corresponding
competence science has to offer in that
regard.
K 2.2.3
Promoting options for biosphere-friendly
consumption
All measures that raise awareness and education will
remain ineffective unless framework conditions are
also created that allow for biosphere-compatible patterns
of production and consumption within society.
This is, for example, possible through economic and
social incentives, or the targeted promotion of model
projects. Programmes targeted to specific players and
areas of action in which a mixture of incentives,
action and information-oriented measures is
deployed – backed up by science – should be initiated
and carried through with the corresponding locally
relevant players (eg consumer and environmental
associations, companies) (Section I 2.5).
K 2.2.4
Integrating bioregional management strategies
into existing planning instruments
The Council recommends promotion of a system of
differentiated intensities of use, with the aim of integrating
the various demands on the biosphere into
one concept of sustainability-oriented use. The three
land use categories, ‘conservation before use’, ‘conservation
through use’ and ‘conservation despite
use’, offer a sensible breakdown (Section E 3.3.1). In
terms of application, it should be investigated to what
extent the bioregional approach is already sufficiently
anchored in the German planning system, and
whether it can be coupled with implementation-oriented
regional management without building up a
second parallel system alongside the existing planning
system (Section E 3.9).
Bioregional management offers a fruitful
approach for considering the various demands on the