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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Protected areas are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world’s land surface. New research by over 40 scientists from almost 30 institutions, including UNEP-WCMC, shows that appropriately located protected areas reduce the extinction risk of species; however, they also found that only half of the world’s most important sites for species conservation are currently protected. Click here for the paper.

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The UNCCD Secretariat has launched the final report of the UNCCD Impact Indicators Pilot study.

UNEP-WCMC supported the UNCCD Secretariat to pilot the indicators by working with 11 countries. Together we assessed the feasibility of reporting on a diverse set of land- and livelihood-related indicators, including poverty, land cover status, malnutrition and biodiversity.
 

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Comments are invited on the draft UN-REDD Programme Social and Environmental Principles and Criteria (SEPC) and on the first draft of the associated Benefit and Risks Tool (BeRT). All feedback is welcome. The deadlines for comments are: 31 December 2011 for SEPC and 20 January 2012 for BeRT. Please click on the links above for further information.

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The UNEP/AEWA Secretariat is pleased to announce that it has launched the national reporting cycle for the 5th Meeting of the Parties to AEWA (MOP5, 14-18 May 2012 in La Rochelle, France) using a new state-of-the-art electronic platform for online reporting developed by the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) in close cooperation with the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat.

 

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A new, systematic review of the evidence on the effectiveness of ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation (EbA) has been carried out to review the effectiveness of EbA and highlight the knowledge gaps. This research was undertaken as a collaboration between BirdLife International, UNEP-WCMC, IIED and the University of Cambridge.

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UNEP-WCMC and the Government of Brazil, funded by UK's DEFRA, recently completed a review of the economic value of Brazil's extensive network of protected areas. The executive summary of the report "Economic Contribution of Brazilian Conservation Units to the National Economy" is now available in English and the whole report in Portuguese.

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'Measuring and Monitoring Ecosystem Services at the Site Scale' introduces a new ‘toolkit’ for measuring ecosystem services at the site scale which is accessible to non-experts and delivers scientifically robust results.

The work has been coordinated by researchers and conservation from Anglia Ruskin University, BirdLife International, Cambridge University, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, with input and guidance provided by over 50 other scientists.
 

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