As announced on 18 March 2021, the UN Biodiversity Conference is scheduled to take place from 11-24 October 2021, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.

The meeting was originally scheduled to take place from 15-28 October 2020, in Kunming, China. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CBD Secretariat announced on 23 March 2020 that the dates for this meeting would be adjusted. On 15 July 2020, the CBD announced the meeting would take place from 17-30 May 2021. 

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) are expected to address a series of issues related to implementation of the Convention and its Protocols.

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, negotiations will be held in the context of an open-ended intersessional Working Group, co-chaired by Francis Ogwal (Uganda) and Basile van Havre (Canada). 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 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the dates will be adjusted.

Additionally, 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 Pacific, Western Europe and Others Group and other members of the EU, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. A thematic consultation with focus on gender elements was also 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: 11-24 October 2021
location: China
additional: Kunming, Yunnan Province
www: https://www.cbd.int/meetings/COP-15