Convenor: Roopali Raghavan
Aim:
How to align action plans by CPSG (largely initiated by academicians or conservation groups) with the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans developed by governments as part of the country's CBD commitment.
Background:
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is an international legally-binding treaty with three main goals: conservation of biodiversity; sustainable use of biodiversity; fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. Recognising the threat of species extinction caused by human activities are at an alarming rate, CBD was opened for signature on 5 June 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio "Earth Summit"). CBD has 196 Parties and 168 Signatures. The Article 6 of the Convention states that each Contracting Party shall :
(a) Develop national strategies, plans or programmes for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity;
(b) Integrate, as far as possible and as appropriate, the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity into relevant sectoral or cross-sectoral plans, programmes and policies.
Article 6 creates an obligation for national biodiversity planning. A national strategy that reflects how the country intends to fulfil the objectives of the CBD, in light of specific national circumstances, and the related action plans will constitute the sequence of steps to be taken to meet these goals. These documents are referred to as National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs).
To date, in accordance with Article 6 of the Convention, 190 of 196 (97%) Parties have developed at least one NBSAP. The attached document - nbsap-country-status.doc lists the names of these 190 countries. This link also provides access to the different NBSAPs and National Reports submitted to the CBD - https://www.cbd.int/nbsap/search/default.shtml .
The IUCN SSC Conservation Planning Specialist Group (CPSG) as part of our mission to save threatened species have been using scientifically sound, collaborative processes that bring together people with diverse perspectives and knowledge to provide species conservation planning expertise to governments, Specialist Groups, zoos and aquariums, and other wildlife organizations. CPSG uses the One Plan approach to species conservation in the development of management strategies and conservation actions by all responsible parties for all populations of a species, whether inside or outside their natural range. It is always attempted to have Government representatives involved as a crucial stakeholder in the action planning workshops. CPSG workshop reports are available here https://www.cpsg.org/document-repository .
These action plans are often not included or identified as government contributions to conservation in their NBSAP submissions. Given that the NBSAPs could be at a different scale (country wide across all biodiversity), from CPSG reports, could be a reason for such an omission.
The aim of this working group is to bring together other members of the CPSG community with an interest in this topic, to identify potential reasons for mis-alignment of both these conservation action documents. The intended outputs include to review opportunities for CPSG to minimise this as much as possible.
Process:
The workshop will be 3 hours long and will proceed as follows:
- Brief introduction to CBD, NBSAPs and knowledge currently available from various countries’ submissions of NBSAPs. (Working group convener)
- Sharing of experiences by CPSG members on their use / reference to NBSAP content, in their CPSG workshop reports. (Brainstorming session with all working group participants)
- Sharing of experiences by CPSG members on relevant NBSAPs referring to their CPSG workshop reports where appropriate. (Brainstorming session with all working group participants)
- Identifying potential reasons/ challenges leading to mis-alignment of NBSAPs and CPSG reports, if any. (Brainstorming session with all working group participants)
- What can CPSG do to counter the reasons identified and arrive at practical management recommendations to avoid the same. (Brainstorming session with all working group participants)
- Summary of priority themes/solutions identified and discussion on these. (All working group participants)
Outcomes:
- Have CPSG members and government representatives be aware of any potential benefits of alignment of NBSAPs and CPSG reports.
- Suggestions for solutions identified, that can be shared with the respective CBD representatives of the governments of various countries, that could be used during revisions of various NBSAPs, where appropriate.
Materials:
Refer to NBSAPs of countries that various CPSG members have worked in, as available on the links provided above.
NBSAP Status by Country (PDF)