To mark the International Day for Biological Diversity 2012 theme of Marine Biodiversity UNEP-WCMC launches the Marine and Coastal Habitat Validation Tool.  

With support from multiple organizations and developed at UNEP-WCMC this online mapping and validation tool will facilitate the improvement of key global datasets, beginning with the critical coastal habitats of mangroves, coral reefs and saltmarshes. New conceptual approaches to marine management are emerging, but their effectiveness are underpinned by the accessibility of timely, relevant fit for-purpose data. This centralized improvement of consistency and accuracy of these critical coastal habitat datasets will work to address key monitoring and data validation needs and aid decision-makers in identifying areas for conservation action.

The beta version allows editing of the Global Distribution of Coral Reefs (2010) (original version downloadable from our Ocean Data Viewer) and the African subset of the USGS Global Distribution of Mangrove (2000) dataset, as well as facilitating creation of new saltmarsh data.

The Marine and Coastal Habitat Validation Tool can be accessed here. 

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To celebrate 20 years of the Global Environmental Facility in 2011, which also coincides with the 40th Anniversary of UNEP in 2012, UNEP will showcase the ’20 Best’ UNEP/GEF projects of the last 20 years. The Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP) Project, for which UNEP-WCMC was the executing agency, has been selected as one of the 20 projects due to its achievements in fostering a coordinated international partnership that provided data, analysis and expertise needed to assess the state of biodiversity worldwide.

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The Max Planck Institute, the IUCN SSC Section on Great Apes and UNEP-WCMC, with generous funding from the Arcus Foundation and the World We Want Foundation, have collaborated to develop the A.P.E.S. Portal and Dashboard. These tools bring together a wealth of information and analyses to aid decision-makers in identifying areas for conservation action for great apes.

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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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