Historical and relative dominance of the convention on biological diversity agenda: a case analysis of decisions and recommendations

In contrast to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) gives developing countries greater bargaining power owing to their abundant natural resources. CBD negotiations tend to be increasingly dominated by agendas related to the CBD’s third objective: benefit sharing. The first and core objective of CBD is biodiversity conservation, but it is often neglected in favor of benefit sharing. To verify this tendency, this study used topic modeling to analyze the recommendations of the subsidiary bodies and decisions made by the Conference of the Parties (COP) over the past 30 years. The study identified the ten most frequently discussed agenda, then determined the relative dominant agenda between the COP and subsidiary bodies. By categorizing the negotiation agendas into strategic decision agendas and operational conservation agendas based on the level of the meeting which the agenda dominated, this study offers a new framework that can be used to understand how strategic and operational factors interact in CBD negotiations. The findings show that biodiversity conservation, the first objective of CBD, is no longer dominant, at least during negotiations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive investigation of all documents generated during CBD negotiations since its inception.