Real World Radio

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#COP13 – The Danger of Negotiating Financialization of Nature Outside Official Spaces

Isaac Rojas, co-coordinator of the Forests and Biodiversity Program of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) has been following up the Financialization of Nature (FN): a process through which the private sector can participate in the conservation of biodiversity. FN consists in converting ecosystems and its benefits in financial assets, an example of this are carbon markets.

Rojas was one of the delegates representing FoEI at the Conference of the Parties (COP 13) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which ended on Sunday in Cancun (Mexico). He is a member of COECOCEIBA – Friends of the Earth Costa Rica. Rojas has been analyzing how financialization of nature has been promoted in this international spaces during side-events, outside the official plenary sessions. It has become a bilateral issue, negotiated either between governments or between governments and corporations, far from the citizen’s scrutiny.

In the following video interview, Rojas insists in the fact that more effort needs to be made to put financialization of nature in the public agenda. These efforts would make it easier for civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities to identify FN mechanisms, in order to address them in an organized way and stop their advance.

For more information about FN: http://www.foei.org/resources/publications/publications-by-subject/forests-and-biodiversity-publications/financial-mechanisms-cbd-opening-doors-privatization-biodiversity

The interview with Isaac Rojas is part of a series of interviews on the most pressing issues about biodiversity with members of the FoEI delegation that participated at the COP 13.