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Important Summits, Conventions and Declarations (Part 2)

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11 May 2020

1.Convention on biological diversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a legally binding treaty to conserve biodiversity has been in force since 1993.

Objectives-

• It has 3 main objectives: The conservation of biological diversity.
• The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity.,fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.
• The CBD, one of the key agreements adopted during the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is the first comprehensive global agreement which addresses all aspects relating to biodiversity.

2.Asia Lpg summit 2019

The summit will offer a unique opportunity to the global LPG industry to interact with development agencies, NGOs and non-profit organizations who have facilitated last-mile access to LPG for the beneficiaries.

Objectives-

• The summit will also bring together academia and private sector to exchange their views on the use of LPG and how pathbreaking initiatives such as ‘Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana’ can bring remarkable socio-economic transformation.
• The WLPGA promotes the use of LPG to foster a cleaner, healthier and more prosperous world.
• With over 200 members and presence in more than 125 countries, the WLPGA represents the interests of private and public companies from the entire LPG value chain under one umbrella.
• The WLPGA provides a platform for the exchange of best practices, facts and figures among its members.
• The Association regularly organises interactive meetings between technical experts, members and key stakeholders to demonstrate the benefits of LPG.

3.Global Digital Health Partnership Summit

The Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) is an international collaboration of governments, government agencies and multinational organisations dedicated to improving the health and well-being of their citizens through the best use of evidence-based digital technologies.

Objectives-

• Governments are making significant investments to harness the power of technology and foster innovation and public-private partnerships that support high quality, sustainable health and care for all. The GDHP facilitates global collaboration and co-operation in the implementation of digital health services.The GDHP is committed to improving health and care through promoting its principles of equality, co-operation, transparency and responsibility.
• Equality: All participants will have an equal opportunity to participate and contribute to the development of the GDHP deliverables and share in the lessons learnt and outputs of the GDHP.
• Co-operation: Participants are helpful and supportive and participate in debates thoughtfully, constructively and respectfully.
• Transparency: Participants act with openness in their engagement with fellow participants to contribute to improved health services, promote innovation and create safer and healthier communities.
• Responsibility: Participants are responsible for their country’s input through their active contribution to GDHP activities that are guided by the annual work plan. Each participant shall endeavour to ensure that outcomes from meetings, such as tasks appointed to them or in general, are carried out effectively and efficiently. Participants will make decisions and participate in discussions in a transparent and fair manner, using evidence, and without discrimination or bias, ensuring they act in the public interest and not for commercial purposes.

4.TIR

The Convention on International Transport of Goods Under Cover of TIR Carnets is a multilateral treaty that was concluded at Geneva on 14 November 1975 to simplify and harmonise the administrative formalities of international road transport.

Objectives-

• The TIR Convention establishes an international customs transit system with maximum facility to move goods:in sealed vehicles or containers;
• from a customs office of departure in one country to a customs office of destination in another country;
• without requiring extensive and time-consuming border checks at intermediate borders;
• while, at the same time, providing customs authorities with the required security and guarantees.

5.International Workshop on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure

The workshop aims to i) identify good practices of disaster risk management in key infrastructure sectors, ii) identify specific areas and pathways for collaborative research on DRI (Transport, Energy, Telecom and Water), iii) discuss and co-create the broad contours of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) as well as a notional roll-out plan for the next three years, and iv) build a forum for members to work on areas of common interest and make specific commitments.Various international agreements have also reiterated the importance and long-term benefits of investing in resilient infrastructure.

Objectives-

• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), 2015-2030, which is the first major agreement of the post-2015 development agenda, identifies investing in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) for resilience and to build back better in reconstruction as priorities for action towards reducing disaster risk.
• Similarly, Goal 9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognizes disaster resilient infrastructure as a crucial driver of economic growth and development.
• Besides reducing infrastructure losses, disaster resilient infrastructure will also help achieve targets pertaining to reduction in mortality, number of affected people and economic losses due to disasters.

6.International Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control treaty that outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors.

Key points of the Convention

Objectives-

• Prohibition of production and use of chemical weapons
• Destruction (or monitored conversion to other functions) of chemical weapons production facilities
• Destruction of all chemical weapons (including chemical weapons abandoned outside the state parties territory)
• Assistance between State Parties and the OPCW in the case of use of chemical weapons
• An OPCW inspection regime for the production of chemicals which might be converted to chemical weapons
• International cooperation in the peaceful use of chemistry in relevant areas

7.Convention on Supplementary Compensation for nuclear Damage (CSC)

The Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage is a 1963 treaty that governs issues of liability in cases of a nuclear accident. It was concluded at Vienna on 21 May 1963 and entered into force on 12 November 1977. The convention has been amended by a 1997 protocol. The depository is the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Objectives-

• The Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) aims at establishing a minimum national compensation amount and at further increasing the amount of compensation through public funds to be made available by the Contracting Parties should the national amount be insufficient to compensate the damage caused by a nuclear incident.
• The Convention is open not only to States that are party to either the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage or the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy (including any amendments to either) but also to other States provided that their national legislation is consistent with uniform rules on civil liability laid down in the Annex to the Convention.

8.Hague Code of Conduct

The International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation, also known as the Hague Code of Conduct (HCOC), was established on 25 November 2002 as an arrangement to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles.

Objectives-

• The HCOC is the result of international efforts to regulate access to ballistic missiles which can potentially deliver weapons of mass destruction. The HCOC is the only multilateral code in the area of disarmament which has been adopted over the last years.
• It is the only normative instrument to verify the spread of ballistic missiles.
• The HCOC does not ban ballistic missiles, but it does call for restraint in their production, testing, and export.

9.Refugee Convention

The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention, is a United Nations multilateral treaty that defines who is a refugee and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. In the general principle of international law, treaties in force are binding upon the parties to it and must be performed in good faith. Countries that have ratified the Refugee Convention are obliged to protect refugees that are on their territory, in accordance with its terms. There are a number of provisions that States parties to the Refugee Convention must adhere to.

10.Biological weapons convention

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons.

Objectives-

• Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain:
• Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes;
• Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.”
• The United States Congress passed the Bioweapons Anti-Terrorism Act in 1989 to implement the Convention. The law applies the Convention’s convent to countries and private citizens, and criminalizes violations of the Convention.

11.Sendai Framework

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) is an international document which was adopted by UN member states between 14th and 18th of March 2015 at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in June 2015. It is the successor agreement to the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–2015), which had been the most encompassing international accord to date on disaster risk reduction.

Objectives-

• The Sendai Framework sets four specific priorities for action:
• Understanding disaster risk;
• Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk;
• Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience;
• Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

12.Outer Space Treaty

The Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, is a treaty that forms the basis of international space law. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans the stationing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in outer space, prohibits military activities on celestial bodies, and details legally binding rules governing the peaceful exploration and use of space.

13.Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 UNFCCC that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the premise that

(a) global warming exists and (b) human-made CO2 emissions have caused it.

Objectives-

• The main feature of the Protocol is that it established legally binding commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases for parties that ratified the Protocol.
• The commitments were based on the Berlin Mandate, which was a part of UNFCCC negotiations leading up to the Protocol.
• Minimizing Impacts on Developing Countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change.

14.U.N. Frame Work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Objectives-

• A framework for international cooperation to combat climate change by limiting average global temperature increases and the resulting climate change, and coping with impacts that were inevitable.
• The primary goals of the UNFCCC were to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at levels that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the global climate.
• The convention embraced the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities which has guided the adoption of a regulatory structure.

15.Basel Convention

• The industrialized world in the 1980s had led to increasing public resistance to the disposal of hazardous wastes, in accordance with what became known as the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome, and to an increase of disposal costs.
• This, in turn, led some operators to seek cheap disposal options for hazardous wastes in the developing countries.
• Environmental awareness was much less developed and regulations and enforcement mechanisms were lacking. The objectives of the convention are to reduce trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes, to minimize the creation of such wastes and to prohibit their shipment from developed countries to the LDCs.

16.Montreal Protocol

Objectives-

• The protocol set targets for reducing the consumption and production of a range of ozone-depleting substances.
• In a major innovation, the protocol recognized that all nations should not be treated equally.
• The agreement acknowledges that certain countries have contributed to ozone depletion more than others.
• It also recognizes that a nation‘s obligation to reduce current emissions should reflect its technological and financial ability to do so.
• Because of this, the agreement sets more stringent standards and accelerated phase-out time tables to countries that have contributed most to ozone depletion

17.World Conservation Strategy

Objectives-

• It set out fundamental principles and objectives for conservation worldwide and identified priorities for national and international action.
• It is considered one of the most influential documents in 20th-century nature conservation and one of the first official documents to introduce the concept of sustainable development.

18.Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (Bonn Convention)

Objectives-

• Aims to conserve terrestrial, marine and avian migratory species throughout their range.
• The Convention facilitates the adoption of strict protection measures for endangered migratory species, the conclusion of multilateral agreements for the conservation and management of migratory species, and co-operative research activities.

19.World Sustainable Development summit

• WSDS has replaced TERI’s earlier called Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS). The first DSDS was organised in 2005. It underscored the need for businesses and the private sector to take lead in poverty reduction and to ensure rapid and sustained adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• It had brought together Nobel laureates, decision-makers political leaders from around the world to deliberate on issues related to sustainable development.
• The aim of the summit is to provide various stakeholders with a single platform in order to provide long-term solutions for the benefit of the global community.

20.Kigali Agreement

The Kigali Amendment amends the 1987 Montreal Protocol to now include gases responsible for global warming and will be binding on countries from 2019.

Objectives-

• It also has provisions for penalties for non-compliance.
• It is considered absolutely vital for reaching the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperature rise to below 2-degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
• Under it, developed countries will also provide enhanced funding support estimated at billions of dollars globally. The exact amount of additional funding from developed countries will be agreed at the next
• Meeting of the Parties in Montreal in 2017 to reduce the emissions of category of greenhouse gases (GHGs) which leads to hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs)