On September 4th and 5th, in Belém, the Business and Biodiversity Workshop was held, promoted by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in partnership with CEBDS, through CT Bio, CNI – National Confederation of Industry and LIFE Institute. The meeting was part of the annual meeting of the Global Partnership for Business and Biodiversity and was also supported by Vale and Natura &Co.
The objective of the workshop was to bring together public authorities, companies and civil society to discuss how to combine economic development with conservation and sustainable use of nature, focusing on strategies to overcome the gaps that still exist in the implementation of the new Global Biodiversity Framework.
The event was attended by the Director of Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity, Braulio Dias, representing the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change – and the CBD, with the participation of GIZ Mesoamerica, Costa Rica; ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Biodiversity Centre) and Japan Business Initiative for Biodiversity (Japan Business Initiative for Biodiversity). Representing CEBDS, the Director of Nature and Society, Juliana Lopes and the Coordinator of the Thematic Chamber of Biodiversity and Biotechnology, Vanessa Pereira.
The workshop provided the opportunity to begin a process of creating recommendations from the private sector to be delivered to the CBD to support governments and companies in implementing the Global Framework. The document is being prepared and will include considerations from members of the global platform. It will later be published on the CBD website and will be part of the list of recommendation documents on the new framework for COP16.
To illustrate the debate on bioeconomy and the integrality of biodiversity in the value chain, a technical activity was organized by Natura & Co before the workshop Cofruta – Cooperativ cofruta, on September 2, which provided a visit to the Amazon rainforest and the sharing of traditional knowledge from the extractive community and the experiences of cooperativism in the Amazon. Cofruta is part of Natura's supply chain, being responsible for collecting seeds (such as tucumã, açaí, ucuúba, andiroba, murumuru) and for the extraction and production process of oil and butter present in the seeds.
