This was the case with the two most controversial motions of all, 107 and 109, which bluntly called for the termination of the contentious partnership agreement between IUCN and the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, and for the director general not to sign similar agreements with extractive industries respectively.

Motion 107, which was rejected during the evening session, was dropped out of the vote on Monday afternoon, apparently for bureaucratic reasons, although it was scheduled to be debated and voted at around 4 p.m. on Monday, along with motion 109, and two other proposals concerning the major theme of "economy, market, and finance".

The issues at stake had to do with private corporations and the rights of indigenous peoples.

"Because of translation procedures, motion 107 was not ready on time," Dennis Hosack, IUCN programme officer for business and biodiversity, told IPS TerraViva. Hosack said all motions had to be documented and translated into Spanish, French and English before their vote by the plenary.

But Motion 107's revised English version was ready for vote on Friday evening, after having been approved by a contact group. "I do not know why the proposal was not discussed on time," Paul de Clerc, of Friends of the Earth International, one of the main formulators of the motion, said.

Whatever the reason, motion 107 had not been debated at the IUCN plenary on Monday afternoon, and belonged to the very last of the 139 resolution proposals the plenary assembly discussed and voted upon.

The motion - proposed by Friends of the Earth International, Pro Natura, the Argentina-based Latin American Centre for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA), and the Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment - called upon IUCN "to terminate the agreement... with Shell" arguing that it "creates a high reputation risk for IUCN."

De Clerc told IPS TerraViva that the main risk for IUCN's reputation was that "Shell could use the agreement to improve its, otherwise tarnished, environmental image while not taking steps that result in significant environmental improvements."

To prove that Shell continues to operate in ways that damage the environment, de Clerc presented a long list of cases in which the company has been taken to court in numerous countries, including the U.S.A., Canada, South Africa and Nigeria, for its environmental practices.

Ashok Khosla, newly-elected president of the IUCN, admitted that such risks exist in all cooperation agreements the group has with corporations. "One of the two major risks such agreements represent for IUCN is precisely that corporations could use them for green-washing their images," Khosla said. "The other major risk is the one represented by hush money," he told IPS TerraViva.

In the context of IUCN agreements with corporations, Khosla said, the group should be able to criticise and denounce its partners' environmental misbehaviour, despite been funded by them.

Khosla said that the rejection of motion 107 did not mean that IUCN should keep silent about Shell's environmental wrongdoings. "We still should be in the position of telling Shell that its activities in the Niger delta are environmentally unacceptable and should be changed."

Motion 109 was approved in the evening session, but only after a long and heated debate at the plenary, which led to the formation of a new contact group to debate it. The group finally came up with a consensus version which environmental grassroots organisations labelled as "watered down."

In its original version presented for vote to the plenary, motion 109 complained that the IUCN director general "has proceeded to make agreements with specific corporations without transparency (...and without) participation of all stakeholders, especially vulnerable groups." The motion also underlined that the IUCN maintains partnerships "with corporations that ... continue operations that damage the environment, ignore the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and persecute those who try to protect their natural heritage."

Although the motion's text was first approved by a contact group last week, during the debate at the plenary session it was the subject of numerous amendments. Government delegates from India, the U.S., Norway and Senegal even called for the motion to be dropped off, arguing that it refers to issues the group's governing bodies, such as the council and the general direction, are well aware of.

Confronted with this knotty debate, the IUCN outgoing president, Valli Moosa, who was chairing the plenary session, called all delegates concerned with the motion, to sit together and come up with a new consensual text, or to confirm the decision to drop it off the debate.

In the final consensual version, the provision calling the IUCN governing bodies not to sign further agreements with extractive industries was erased. This "watering down" led Antonio Claparols, of The Ecological Society of the Philippines, to call the IUCN assembly "an absurd circus."

The Ecological Society of the Philippines, together with the Sierra Club of the U.S.A., the Amsterdam-based environmental and development organisation Both Ends, and other NGOs, had formulated the motion's first original version.

"We are selling out IUCN reputation to the private sector," Claparols told IPS TerraViva. "Extractive industries, at least in the Philippines, have never acted in good faith. Their activities are killing rivers, biodiversity, and even people in my country."

But the resolution still urges the IUCN's governing bodies to make sure that all partnership agreements with the private sector include cancellation clauses which can be triggered by the organisation in case of substantiated doubts of its efficacy. IUCN has argued recently that the cancellation of partnership contracts with corporations could led to legal actions against the group, and provoke "unforeseeable financial consequences (for IUCN)."

Other controversial motions, all concerning the rights of indigenous peoples on the administration of protected areas, were also left for the last cycle of the IUCN plenary debates. The approval of the motion calling IUCN to endorse the U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples as the legal framework of the group in dealing with protected areas was greeted as "a breakthrough."

The U.N. declaration is considered as the international mechanism enhancing the indigenous peoples' rights all over the world, in the issue of governing protected areas, and related ecosystems.

Andrea Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, told IPS TerraViva that the endorsing by the IUCN of the U.N. declaration as its own framework "is a giant step forward in preserving biodiversity in our territories."

Jorge Nahuel, a leader of Mapuche people, the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina, used very much the same words. "That the IUCN takes the U.N. declaration as its own framework, radically changes the issue of governance of protected areas and the chances of conservation in our ecosystems," he said.

Other resolutions adopted by the IUCN assembly call the group's member states to uphold the integrity of critical ecosystems, and carry out strategic environmental assessments before considering approving any mining operations in protected areas. Resolution 110, on the same subject, urges international mining companies to avoid mineral exploitations in territories of indigenous peoples where full free and informed consents has not been obtained.

This provision is in line with the convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation, which demands that signatory member states guarantee indigenous communities a full participation in decision-taking debates on extractive projects in their territories.

The IUCN plenary adopted yet another resolution on protecting the environment in South America. Motion 65 urges the government of Chile to respect the integrated impact assessments on the hydroelectric dams proposed for the Patagonian Baker and Pascua rivers, and the 2,200 kilometres long transmission lines projected to convey electricity from the dams to the country's capital Santiago, and for the copper and gold mines, further to the north.

The projects, Chilean environmental activist Bernardo Zentilli van Kilsdonk told IPS TerraViva, are based on water management decisions taken by the dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet, to give concessions without inviting tenders, and are valid for perpetuity. "This undemocratic water management is enshrined in the constitution, but with the support of IUCN, it may be that we can change it," Zentilli said.