The fifth session of the Open-ended Ad Hoc Working Group of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress (WGLR 5) in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety convened on Wednesday for its seventh and final day of negotiations in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.

The small Friends of the Chair group completed its work at 4:30 am on Wednesday. The group agreed elements on the definition of damage, and broad functional and narrow geographical scope. Despite the all night negotiations, the standard of liability and causation could not be agreed and these and other issues remain outstanding. 

Plenary reconvened in the afternoon to consider the work of the small Friends of the Chair group in the form of the further revised working draft. The draft combined elements from the core elements paper with the corresponding options for operational text. Delegates agreed to adopt the further revised working draft as Annex I.

Delegates then addressed other matters and the EC proposed holding an open and participatory intersessional Friends of the Chair meeting to continue negotiations.

At 6:35 pm the plenary was adjourned to allow for regional consultations on the intersessional work and completion of the meeting report.

The meeting reconvened at 7:00 pm and delegates agreed to hold an intersessional Friends of the Chair group, for three days immediately prior to COP/MOP (7-9 May 2008) in Bonn, Germany. Co-Chair Nieto gavelled the meeting to a close at 7:12 pm.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) resources
Meeting documents
Provisional agenda
Annotated Provisional Agenda
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety web page
Global Biodiversity Outlook
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

IISD RS resources
IISD RS coverage of the Fourth meeting of the AHOE-WG of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 22-26 October 2007, Montréal, Canada
IISD RS summary report of the Third meeting of the AHOE-WG of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 19-23 February 2007, Montréal, Canada (HTML - PDF)
IISD RS coverage of the CBD COP-8, 20-31 March 2006, Curitiba, Brazil
IISD RS coverage of the Third Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP/MOP-3), 13-17 March 2006, Curitiba, Brazil
IISD RS coverage of the Second meeting of the AHOE-WG of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 20-24 February 2006, Montréal, Canada
IISD RS coverage of the COP-7 to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the seventeenth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (COP-7/MOP-17), Dakar, Senegal, 12-16 December 2005
IISD RS coverage of the COP/MOP-2, 30 May - 3 June 2005, Montréal, Canada
IISD RS coverage of the First meeting of the AHOE-WG of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 25-27 May 2005, Montréal, Canada
IISD RS biodiversity and wildlife page
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