Conservation to be focus area at CoP-11

Mayors and Municipal Commissioners, 70 from other countries and 60 from cities from within the country, will be attending a two-day city summit -- ‘Cities for Life: City and Sub-national Biodiversity Summit’ on October 15-16 during the forthcoming Conference of Parties (CoP).

Union Minister for Urban Development Kamal Nath is expected to inaugurate the event.

The GHMC in partnership with ICLEI — Local governments for Sustainability, the State government and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) would be holding the meeting, said GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu.

The first day will have the Mayors or city heads giving presentations about their respective cities about the progress made in preserving biodiversity. The next day, representatives from various State governments within the country and abroad will be participating. At least 300 delegates are expected to attend the meet, About 200 delegates have registered for meeting representing 40 cities and 16 State governments from 36 countries so far.

Hyderabad Mayor Mohd. Majid Hussain would be presenting a biodiversity index report at the summit based on information collated from different city universities, research bodies and the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), he said.

Status report

Mr. Krishna Babu said it would be more of a status report and would be put up for discussion. He claimed that Hyderabad would be the first city in the country to present such a report. About 54 other cities from different countries too have prepared such a study.

The Hyderabad draft declaration too would be debated during the meet to be held at the HICC in parallel with the CBD COP.

Delegates will also be taking stock of the progress achieved since the last CBD summit held at Nagoya and discuss the response of the cities, States, academia and other organisations to the action plan. It will be the third such cities level summit being held along with the CBD and the first to be held adjacently.

ICLEI or the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, was established in 1990 as an international association of local governments, national and regional local government organisations that have made a commitment to sustainable development.