CCI engagement in defining the post-2020 biodiversity agenda

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 – and its associated 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets – has been the largest ever intergovernmental plan for saving nature and nature’s benefits on land and sea.

While continuing to focus on achieving Aichi targets, the international community will need to contribute to processes that will lead to adoption of a post-2020 biodiversity strategy. The CCI cluster has a unique opportunity to contribute to this debate through its remarkable strengths in biological, social and political conservation science, broad experience of real world conservation, and involvement in relevant international agreements and other intergovernmental process.

Project Aims

UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), RSPB, BirdLife International, IUCN and a number of academics from the University of Cambridge are planning to convene an ‘Expert Meeting’ in mid-2018. Our principle objective is to bring together many key scientists, leading thinkers and communicators to review science perspectives and policy options for the post-2020 biodiversity strategy. The aim is to increase understanding of how science can inform the development of the post-2020 strategy and how this can be most effectively communicated.

Many of the CCI partners are actively and directly involved in the implementation and assessment of the Strategic Plan, enabling the CCI to be well placed to convene such an event. This event will propel the CCI cluster to the forefront of these debates around the post-2020 biodiversity agenda, making the CCI an important player in the process that will lead to adoption of a post-2020 biodiversity strategy.

Key Activities

The main activity will be the ‘Expert Meeting’. In order to deliver this, CCI and non-CCI partners are working together to plan the meeting for constructively framing the post-2020 debate and producing useful outputs.

Information on related initiatives and ‘Transformational Ideas’ for future conservation are being compiled and analysed, in order to facilitate presentations and debates on these topics.

Conservation Impact

The event and its outputs aim to inject scientific understanding and credibility into the discussions that will lead to adoption of a new strategy at the CBD Conference of the Parties in 2020 in China.

Outputs

• Communications strategy to promote the outputs of the main meeting
• Produce a high level summary of the meeting to help frame post-2020 debates
• Produce a suitable document to be used in later CBD meetings
• Define the work which can be taken forward by the respective organisations within the CCI partners and non-partner organisations
• Improve the streamlining and collaboration of work in this field