The UN Biodiversity Conference in Bonn delivered less than it promised - By Hannes Koch

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel made a personal triumph out of the international conference on bio­diversity that took place in Bonn in late May. But advancement of the actual cause was limited.

Measured by the conditions, the conference was a huge success, Gabriel declared at the end of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in May. It is true: Before the conference, Gabriel had used targeted information on biodiversity - a subject the public still knows little about - to raise expectations. Then he dampened those expectations and subsequently, he turned them in the direction in which relative progress was most likely to be achieved. He could then delightedly announce - relative progress.

Speaking to hundreds of journalists, Gabriel stressed, above all, that a worldwide network of protected areas was taking shape. He said about 450,000 square kilometers were available in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Guatemala, and Yemen - more than the entire area of Germany. To spur the process on, the German government pledged ?500 million from 2009 to 2012. After that, ?500 million would go into the process annually, to be financed by proceeds from carbon emissions trading.

Setting up a worldwide network of protected areas, known as the LifeWeb, and providing the necessary millions for it, was one of the goals given prominence by the environment minister in the weeks before the conference. Gabriel's prophecy in his own cause was thereby fulfilled - even though progress was modest. Even with her ?500 million gift presented to full effect at the Bonn conference, Chancellor Angela Merkel was unable to move other governments to follow suit. And environmental groups such as the World Wide Fund (WWF) repeatedly criticized one glaring deficiency in the agreement to protected areas. "How can we check that these promises are being implemented," asked WWF biodiversity expert Jörg Roos. The LifeWeb Initiative has no internal control mechanisms. The deal is not even legally binding.

Nevertheless, Roos still described the LifeWeb as progress. Because ever since it was passed at the big UN climate conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity has led a shadowy existence. The convention enshrines three goals: the conservation of the Earth's biological diversity, sustainable use of its components and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources between developing and industrial nations. One hundred and ninety countries including the European Union have now signed it but in practice, nothing much has happened.

After years of inertia, the Bonn conference produced some movement at last. There was also progress on the controversial subject of access and benefit sharing (ABS). It focuses on conflicts such as that concerning the people of the South African town of Alice. They demand that the European Patent Office cancel a patent held by a German company, the Dr. Willmar Schwabe Group, on the flu treatment Umckaloabo. The South Africans want Schwabe to share the profits with them. Their argument: The German company misappropriated the native people's traditional knowledge of the properties of Pelargonium sidoides, which grows in South Africa. Schwabe has dismissed the claim, arguing that the company developed the medicine itself and refuses to pay compensation.

To resolve cases like this, the world needs a framework agreement. Against initial resistance from delegations from Japan, Canada and other countries, the mandate for negotiations for it was finally concluded in Bonn. The final document for an ABS agreement is to be passed at the next major CBD conference in 2010 in Japan - so far, so good. Whether corporations in industrial countries will have agreed to share their profits with the countries of origin of plants with medicinal properties by then is another matter.

The conference's most important goal also raises skepticism. By 2010, the loss of plant and animal species worldwide is to be significantly reduced. Currently, species are dying 100 to 1,000 times faster than new ones can replace them. There are about 41,000 endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. Despite the pleasing progress in the details, the agreements reached at the Bonn conference will neither stop, nor perceptibly slow this process. The deals struck are insufficient. They are not courageous enough. "The pace is far too slow," Roos said. But the critics see no alternative to the wearying process of negotiation. They will try to step up the pressure again in 2010.