UNEP-WCMC completed an analysis of the National Reports submitted to the fifth Meeting of the Parties to AEWA (the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement), due to be held in La Rochelle, France, in May. For the first time, National Reports were compiled and submitted through the CMS Family Online Reporting System, a tool developed by UNEP-WCMC in close collaboration with the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat. The National Report submission rate for MOP5 was the highest to date.

The report is available on the AEWA website here.

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How do bioenergy policies relate to the REDD+ mechanism, is the subject of this new Bioenergy Issue Paper jointly authored by UNEP and UNEP-WCMC. 
The potential contribution of bioenergy in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases has been widely debated, both in terms of climate change mitigation potential and potential risk of increases in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from land use change. This has raised the question of how bioenergy policies relate to the REDD+ mechanism developed under the UNFCCC. This issue paper examines the complexity of this relationship and stresses the importance of ensuring policy coherence across the relevant sectors.  

For a look at the UNEP Issue Paper Series, please visit:
http://www.unep.org/bioenergy/Issues/UNEPIssuePaperSeries/tabid/79387/Default.aspx 
 

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UNEP-WCMC has recently completed a report for the Finnish Ministry of Environment on 'Promoting synergies within the cluster of biodiversity-related multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs)'. This report builds on previous initiatives relevant to the issue, and looks at current coordination and collaboration between the biodiversity-related MEAs with respect to four issues: the science-policy interface; strategic planning; national reporting; and capacity building.

The full report and a summary of the full report are now available here.

 

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UNEP-WCMC, with the guidance of regional partners, stakeholders and a dedicated UNEP inter-departmental task team, recently completed the preparation of UNEP’s programme document for a 12 year intervention in support of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative. This long-term programmatic proposal includes a subset of priority activities for a 3-year inception phase (2012-2015) aiming at establishing an enabling environment to enhance ecosystem management and environmental governance in the Great Green Wall region.

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Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Environment, announced the Follow-on Phase of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) in her speech at the Planet Under Pressure conference (26-29 March 2012) in London.

UNEP-WCMC is once again providing the Secretariat for the new phase of the UK NEA, which has recently commenced. The two-year long follow-on project aims to further develop and communicate the evidence base of the UK NEA and make it relevant to decision and policy making at different spatial scales across the UK.

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The Social and Environmental Principles and Criteria (SEPC) provide a guiding framework for the UN-REDD Programme to address social and environmental issues in REDD+ and can support countries in developing national approaches to social and environmental safeguards for REDD+. The SEPC, which include revisions in the light of the most recent consultation with a wide range of countries, agencies and civil society organisations, were welcomed by the UN-REDD Policy Board at its 8th meeting in Asunción (Paraguay), March 2012. The SEPC, its supporting document and a matrix of the comments received and the SEPC teams responses to them can be found here.

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UNEP-WCMC played a key role informing decisions taken at the 26th meeting of the Animals Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that took place 15th-20th March 2012 in Geneva.

Experts on sustainable use discussed a UNEP-WCMC report with information on sustainability findings for a range of species in trade (included in the “Review of Significant Trade” process). On the basis of this information, they agreed on a number of recommendations, such as the setting of cautious export quotas, for a number of species, including Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin from the Solomon Islands, grey-crowned and black-crowned cranes from Africa, golden mantella frog from Madagascar, seahorses from Southeast Asia, beluga sturgeon from the Caspian Sea, emperor scorpion from Africa, and giant clams from the Pacific.

The Animals Committee also relied on UNEP-WCMC reports (see reports on recent taxonomic changes and on coral nomenclature) to inform discussions on CITES nomenclature. The list of coral species extracted from the UNEP-WCMC Species Database was recommended for adoption as the CITES nomenclature standard reference for corals.

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The Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Director of UNEP-WCMC have signed a jointly agreed programme of work on support of UNEP-WCMC for the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. 

The Plan was adopted by the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD in 2010 in Nagoya, Japan. The programme of work identifies a number of areas where UNEP-WCMC and CBD will collaborate, including, among others, biodiversity indicators, marine and coastal biodiversity, protected areas, and capacity-building for National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.

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The EU Wildlife Trade Yearbook 2009, the publicly-available version of the Analysis of the European Union and candidate countries’ annual reports to CITES 2009, is now available online here. The document summarises the EU’s trade in wildlife listed in the Annexes to the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations in 2009, as reported to CITES.

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