11-15 October 2021 Kunming, Guizhou, China (virtual)
UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP 15) (Part 1)

On 18 August 2021, the Secretariat announced that COP 15 will take place in two parts. The first part will take place in a virtual format, from 11-15 October 2021. The second part of COP 15 will be a face-to-face meeting in Kunming, China, from 25 April-8 May 2022.

The UN Biodiversity Conference was originally scheduled to take place from 15-28 October 2020, in Kunming, China, but was postponed on 23 March 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. On 15 July 2020, the CBD announced the meeting would take place from 17-30 May 2021. On 18 March 2021 the CBD Secretariat updated parties that the meetings would take place from 11-24 October 2021, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.

The Conference comprises the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the tenth Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Cartagena Protocol COP/MOP 10), and the fourth Meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing (Nagoya Protocol COP/MOP 4). 

CBD COP 15 will review the achievement and delivery of the CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. It is also anticipated that the final decision on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework will be taken, together with decisions on related topics including capacity building and resource mobilization. As part of the process to develop the post-2020 framework, an open-ended intersessional Working Group, co-chaired by Francis Ogwal (Uganda) and Basile van Havre (Canada), provides the framework for negotiations. The first meeting of the Working Group took place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 27-30 August 2019. Its second meeting took place in Rome, Italy, from 24-28 February 2020. The third meeting of the Working Group was expected to convene from 27-31 July 2020 in Colombia but was postponed due to the pandemic.

The Convention’s other intersessional and subsidiary bodies, including the Working Group on Article 8(j), the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) will address aspects of the post-2020 framework of relevance to their mandates.

A series of regional consultations have already taken place, including for Asia and the PacificWestern Europe and Others Group and other members of the EUAfricaCentral and Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. A thematic consultation with focus on gender elements was held in New York, US, and a consultation workshop among the biodiversity-related conventions took place from 10-12 June 2019 in Bern, Switzerland.

Read the SDG Knowledge Hub policy brief on the road to the 2020 UN Biodiversity Conference here. The SDG Knowledge Hub summary of the 2018 UN Biodiversity Conference is here.

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dates: 11-15 October 2021
location: Kunming, Guizhou, China (virtual)
additional: Yunnan Province
www: https://www.cbd.int/meetings/COP-15

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