Japan to pay poor nations billions for ecosystems

Japan announced Wednesday a two-billion-dollar environment rescue package for developing countries in a bid to kickstart tense UN talks aimed at securing a pact on saving biodiversity.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Japan wanted to help lead the world in protecting the world's animals and plants from extinction, and offered the money to poor nations over the next three years.

"We will launch a 'life in harmony initiative' to support developing countries' efforts to compile and update their national (biodiversity) strategies and implement them," Kan said.

"We will provide assistance in the amount of two billion US dollars over three years from 2010."

Kan was addressing delegates from more than 190 countries who are in the central Japanese city of Nagoya to map out a strategy to save the world's plant and animal species from extinction.

The 12-day event is due to end on Friday with the United Nations aiming for a 10-year plan that includes commitments for protecting ecosystems and ending the loss of biodiversity that scientists say is threatening humans' lives.

Pointing with alarm at an ongoing extinction crisis, scientists say humans' destruction of ecosystems is causing the world's plant and animal species to vanish at up to 1,000 times the natural rate.

Bogged down

While all delegates in Nagoya have said they are committed to securing a pact this week, talks have become bogged down in familiar disputes between rich and poor nations that have plagued climate change negotiations.

One point of dispute has been an insistence from developing countries that rich nations must commit to helping them financially to save their rainforests, waterways, wetlands and other ecosystems.

In this regard, Japan's announcement improved the mood in Nagoya -- even though details were scant as to where the money would be spent and whether it would all be direct aid or include loans.

Environmental group Greenpeace, which is part of the large civil society movement also involved in the talks, said Japan's offer likely boosted the chances of a meaningful deal being reached in Nagoya.

"This is a great start, that Japan is providing concrete figures to protect life on Earth," Greenpeace Japan's ocean campaigner, Wakao Hanaoka, told AFP.

"We hope it provides an example for other countries to do the same."

However, the European delegation said it would not make any similar offers in Nagoya, emphasising it was already providing developing nations with one billion euros (1.38 billion dollars) a year to help protect their ecosystems.

"We have a record of playing in that league and we have every intention of continuing to play in that league," the European Commission's director general for the environment, Karl Falkenberg, told reporters.

The United States is not a party to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, and thus is not directly involved in the Nagoya talks.

High expectations

If all goes to plan, a deal on Friday would see countries commit to 20 targets on saving biodiversity.

These would include pledges on protecting fisheries and forests, cutting pollution levels and restoring degraded ecosystems.

But another major dispute aside from the financing issue still threatens a pact on the strategic plan.

Brazil has insisted many developing countries will not sign the document unless there is also a binding legal protocol on "fairly and equitably" sharing genetic resources.

Developing countries argue rich countries and companies have been allowed for too long to take genetic resources, such as wild plants, and use them to make medicines, cosmetics and other products for huge profits.

Under the proposed so-called Access and Benefits Sharing Protocol, companies would have to pay people in developing countries for taking the indigenous products and the knowledge of how to use them.

Delegates from both sides say a deal on ABS is possible in Nagoya, but that many details of the proposed protocol are still in dispute.