Green economy and sustainable development
International events during the Danish EU Presidency with political attendance will be: UNEP Governing Council, 12th Special Session (20-22 February, Kenya) http://www.unep.org and the Rio+20 Conference (20-22 June, Brazil) http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20. The UNEP meeting is mainly for environment ministers and will amongst other things discuss green economy as an input to the Rio+20 Conference. The Rio+20 Conference has a wider scope and will focus on sustainable development. It is the hope of the Brazilian organisers that it will attract Heads of States and bring together ministers of environment, finance and development. The two conference themes are Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and Reform of the Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development.
Biodiversity and chemicals
On top of this, Denmark is very engaged in areas of work relating to biodiversity and chemicals management.
On biodiversity, Denmark together with the EU will amongst other things continue to follow up on the Nagoya decisions from 2010 to find solutions to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020, to find increased resources for conserving biodiversity and to promote the ratification of the legally binding agreement on the ABS Protocol (http://www.cbd.int/abs). Also, it is expected that an Intergovernmental Platform on Ecosystems and Biodiversity, IPBES – equivalent to the IPCC – will be operational (http://www.ipbes.net).
A new global mercury convention
On chemicals management, Denmark together with the rest of the EU is continuing the work to achieve a new global mercury convention which aims to minimise and where appropriate eliminate man-made emissions of mercury.