Convention on Biological Diversity

Lore & Background

The notion of an international convention on biodiversity was conceived at a UNEP Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on Biological Diversity in November 1988. An intergovernmental negotiating committee finalized the text, which was adopted at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1992. The Convention was opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit and by its closing date had received 168 signatures. It entered into force on 29 December 1993. The United States is the only UN member state that has not ratified it.

Reader's Guide

The Convention on Biological Diversity is significant as the key international legal instrument for biodiversity, linking conservation to sustainable development and benefit-sharing from genetic resources. It established the precautionary principle in environmental law and created frameworks such as the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing. The Convention's Conference of the Parties (COP) meets regularly, with COP 1 in 1994 and COP 16 in 2024. The CBD Secretariat coordinates efforts, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2011–2020, which were ultimately not met due to lack of clarity, measurement difficulties, unreported actions, limited funding, and low prioritization. The Convention also addresses marine biodiversity through Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) and supports the development of a High Seas Treaty under UNCLOS.

Did You Know?

• The Convention banned some forms of geoengineering in 2010.
• The United States is the only UN member state that has not ratified the Convention.
• The Nagoya Protocol was adopted on 29 October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan, and entered into force on 12 October 2014.
• The Aichi Biodiversity Targets were 20 international goals set under the Convention, but countries failed to meet them.

Origins and Foundational Vision

The idea of a global treaty dedicated to protecting life on Earth first took shape in November 1988, when a United Nations Environment Programme working group of experts began exploring the concept. The following year, a broader technical and legal expert panel was convened to draft a text addressing conservation, sustainable use, and the sharing of benefits from genetic resources with sovereign states and local communities. By 1991, an intergovernmental negotiating committee was tasked with finalizing the language. In 1992, a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, produced the Nairobi Final Act, and the text was subsequently opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit on 5 June 1992. By the closing date of 4 June 1993, 168 nations had signed, and the treaty entered into force on 29 December 1993. The Convention was groundbreaking: for the first time in international law, it declared biodiversity conservation a common concern of humankind and an integral part of development. It is legally binding on its Parties, covers all ecosystems, species, and genetic resources, and embeds the precautionary principle. Notably, the United States remains the only UN member state that has not ratified it.

Supplementary Protocols and the Biotechnology Frontier

Two supplementary agreements extend the Convention's reach into specific modern challenges. The Cartagena Protocol, adopted on 29 January 2000 and entering into force on 11 September 2003, governs the cross-border movement of living modified organisms produced through modern biotechnology. It addresses technology development and transfer, benefit-sharing, and biosafety concerns, giving nations a structured framework for managing genetically engineered organisms that cross borders. The Nagoya Protocol, adopted on 29 October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan, and entering into force on 12 October 2014, provides a transparent legal framework specifically for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources. Together, these protocols operationalize two of the Convention's three core objectives—sustainable use and benefit-sharing—while the Cartagena instrument adds a critical biosafety dimension to the rapidly expanding field of biotechnology. Both demonstrate how the original 1992 treaty has evolved to address scientific and commercial developments not fully anticipated at the time of its drafting.

The Aichi Targets and a Decade of Unmet Goals

In December 2010, following a recommendation from CBD signatories meeting in Nagoya, the United Nations declared 2011 to 2020 as the Decade on Biodiversity. The Convention's Secretariat had served as the focal point for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, and the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020, created that same year, set out the Aichi Biodiversity Targets—twenty international goals designed to protect biodiversity, promote sustainable use of natural resources, and safeguard species. In practice, however, the decade proved largely unsuccessful. Countries failed to meet the Aichi Targets for several compounding reasons: the goals lacked sufficient clarity, they proved difficult to measure, national actions went unreported, and funding remained limited. A deeper structural problem was the low prioritization biodiversity received relative to other sectors such as agriculture. The combination of vague metrics, weak enforcement mechanisms, and competing economic priorities rendered the targets ineffective, leaving the global community to confront a renewed biodiversity crisis as the decade closed without its objectives achieved.

Marine Biodiversity and the High Seas Treaty

The Convention's current work in marine and coastal biodiversity centers on identifying Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas, or EBSAs, in specific ocean locations using scientific criteria. This effort is part of a broader ambition to create an international legally binding instrument that would involve area-based planning and decision-making conducted under the framework of UNCLOS. The ultimate goal is to support the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in regions beyond areas of national jurisdiction, a domain commonly referred to through the BBNJ treaty or the High Seas Treaty. This represents a significant expansion of the Convention's scope from terrestrial ecosystems, which were its original focus, into the vast and largely ungoverned waters of the open ocean. By anchoring marine protection in legally binding international instruments and grounding decisions in scientific criteria, the CBD seeks to extend the same principles of conservation, sustainable use, and equitable benefit-sharing that underpin its terrestrial mandate to the world's oceans.