The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has launched a new initiative to help countries conserve nature while also reducing poverty.
The three-year project, led by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), is intended to ensure that policies to conserve nature and reduce poverty work in harmony.
The project comes ahead of the UN’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17.
It will help nations identify opportunities to build a business case for biodiversity, as a key development asset through trade in biodiversity-based products and services, improved genetic diversity for agriculture, and green jobs in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy as well as ecotourism.
Dilys Roe of IIED says: Biodiversity and poverty are tightly linked, but policies for each rarely are.
The two sides of policymaking need to be brought together so that natural resources can contribute to development and poverty reduction strategies in a sustainable way.
In 2010, all 193 parties to the CBD adopted a new 10-year strategy to achieve the aims of the convention, which are to conserve biodiversity, to ensure that it is used sustainably and that the benefits from its use are shared fairly and equitably.As part of the new strategy, countries agreed to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society.
By 2020, at the latest, biodiversity values [should] have been integrated into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies and planning processes, and incorporated into national accounting, as appropriate, and reporting systems.
The Biodiversity Mainstreaming Diagnostic Tool will help countries revise their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP) something all parties to the CBD have agreed to do by 2014. As part of the project, four African countries Botswana, Namibia, Seychelles and Uganda are already using the tool to update and strengthen their NBSAP.
Leadership, good information and political acumen will be essential if countries are to integrate policies for biodiversity and development, says Jessica Smith of UNEP-WCMC.
We expect the experiences of these four leading countries in Africa to inspire and influence a whole new generation of NBSAPs in other parties to the CBD around the world.
Meanwhile, the international project leaders will continue to develop support systems that are relevant to all countries, including the production of a report on the state of knowledge on efforts to include biodiversity in other areas of policymaking.