island biodiversity: The Conference of Parties (COP) adopted a programme on island biodiversity encouraging community-based approaches

marine protected areas: Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) mandate to work on marine protected areas beyond national boundaries conflicts with the existing UN working group on marine biodiversity. Need was felt to redefine CBD's role but some believed agreement on the protection of deep-sea biodiversity through protected areas will remain elusive, if isolated from discussions on marine genetic resources.

incentives and disincentives for biodiversity conservation: It was felt Europe would use these to find loopholes, protecting its subsidies to agriculture. Stalemate pushed the issue to next COP

environmental impact assessment: Innocuous wordings keeping CBD guidelines on inclusion of assessment of biodiversity as suggestive, not enforceable.

process versus progress: Underlying debates about whether CBD was getting embroiled in processes rather than taking on substantial work. Some valued the clearer understanding, coming out of COP-8, of the roles and modalities for the upcoming CBD meetings, particularly the Working Groups on access and benefit sharing, protected areas and review of implementation, as leading to more focused and effective work. Others complained of too many inter-sessional meetings of subordinate groups.