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The 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will be held in Yerevan on October 19–30. Among the many countries represented, the United Kingdom will also send a delegation to Armenia.
UK Ambassador to Armenia Alexandra Cole emphasized the importance of the event in an interview with Armenpress, stressing that a country hosting conferences such as COP17 truly deserves strong support.
“I think every one of us understands the absolute urgent importance of protecting our environment and trying to mitigate the impact of climate change. COP17, of course, is focused on biodiversity, but that's critically at risk partly because of climate change, but whichever way you put it, it's because of human interference. To the UK government, it's a real priority to support the biodiversity COP and indeed broader climate change conferences,” Ambassador Cole said.
The ambassador added that the UK has a number of objectives which seem quite technical because technical is what's needed, particularly around financing nature preservation and around ensuring that solutions are fully inclusive. “There's no point trying to work out how to fix things without consulting the people who actually know about those things. We have a big delegation coming because we consider it so important,” the ambassador said.
The UK delegation will be led by the UK Minister for Nature, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, and will include a mixture of civil servants, government employees, civil society representatives and business representatives. UK Special Representative for Nature Ruth Davis will also be part of the delegation.
“And that's because, again, a bit like our security approach, this is very much a whole-of-society issue for us to tackle, and I think for me personally and for the embassy here in Armenia, we won't necessarily be involved in all the negotiations, but our goal for COP17 is for it to run smoothly and for Armenia to have a successful presidency, because anyone who's prepared to host conferences such as these really deserves all the support they can get, and hopefully we'll put Armenia on the international stage, and that would be great,” the ambassador said.
The full interview with the UK ambassador will be published later.