The Oil and Gas Industry's Role in Inter-Governmental Negotiations Around Global Biodiversity CBD COP and the Use of a Risk-Based Management
Authors: Palandro David , Johnston Mark , Kostareli Artemis , Gray Madeleine 
Published: March 2020

Numerous scientific reports highlight the continued global decline in biodiversity. In response, the 14th Conference of the Parties for the UN Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD COP) agreed on the need to mainstream biodiversity into a number of sectors including of energy and mining. Accordingly, IPIECA-IOGP engaged with global stakeholders, sharing messages of good practices for biodiversity management. There is a clear need for engagement, which will continue in CBD COP-15 as a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework to set the necessary action to halt the decline in biodiversity is developed.

IPIECA-IOGP engaged with the CBD COP-14 process in the following ways:Hosted an industry engagement and knowledge-sharing workshop and a cross-sectoral side event ahead and during CBD COP-14Attended SBSTTA 21 and SBI 2 and contributed in multiple side eventsPresented at the ‘International expert meeting on mainstreaming biodiversity in the energy and mining, infrastructure, and manufacturing and processing sectors’Presented at CBD COP-14 High Level SegmentSenior representation at the Leaders’ BreakfastIPIECA-IOGP and multiple member presentations at the Biodiversity and Business ForumCross-sectoral messaging shared at the Rio PavilionIPIECA-IOGP intervention during the COP negotiations

IPIECA-IOGP's successful engagement at CBD COP-14 was acknowledged by a number of key international stakeholders, include Members States and UN bodies and was important in the work undertaken by IPIECA-IOGP and the oil and gas sector more widely. Lessons learned feed into ongoing outreach with the COP process. As CBD COP-15 draws closer, IPIECA-IOGP will be sharing messages around good BES management practices in the oil and gas industry. Underpinning the COP-14, and the future COP-15, engagements was a strong technical focus on the six interrelated management practices, providing a framework for management of BES across the oil and gas asset life cycle: Build BES into governance and business processes.Engage stakeholders and understand their expectations around BES.Understand BES baselines.Assess BES dependencies and potential impacts.Mitigate and manage BES impacts and identify BES opportunities.Select, measure and report BES performance indicators.

Oil and gas companies integrate (BES) conservation considerations into their business management systems, using a risk-based approach to manage the potential impacts to the environment. Governments too can enhance efforts to embed biodiversity considerations in the life cycle. Coordination between sectors is key, particularly when developing national biodiversity strategies and action plans.

Practice #5 considers the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimise, restore, offset), which offers industry and governments a framework for good practice management. Building on existing work, this messaging will be taken forward throughout communication to 2020 when CBD COP-15 sets the future global biodiversity agenda.

The paper presents the new communications materials developed for the oil and gas industry engagement during the CBD COP process. There have been attempts at engaging in the past, but this represents a collaborative, industry approach which is both novel and effective to-date.