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Africa rises to the challenge of sustainable development

Friday 22 May is International Day for Biological Diversity and this year’s theme focuses attention on using biodiversity for sustainable development. This day of celebration coincides with the closing day of the Africa Rising: Mobilising Biodiversity Data for Sustainable Development, which aims to liberate policy-relevant biodiversity data and use it in sustainable development planning.

Biodiversity is important for sustainable development because nature provides jobs and tradable assets like food, medicine and building materials that support local and global economies. Nature provides the food and clean water we need to sustain a growing global population. Nature can mitigate the effects of climate change, making the ecosystems we depend on for basic daily needs more resilient to changes in weather patterns. The biological diversity within these ecosystems makes them more resilient and presents opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. Therefore understanding the importance of biological diversity for the economy and human well-being, and sharing the data with those who need it, is an important part of planning for a sustainable future.

Maxwell Gomera at Africa Rising

Maxwell Gomera, Deputy Director, UNEP-WCMC, facilitates a session during the Africa Rising conference

At the Africa Rising conference, almost 100 experts gathered to discuss how biodiversity information can enable evidence-based decision-making and spur sustainable development in Africa. Hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), the conference was organized in partnership with UNEP-WCMC, the Global Information Facility (GBIF) and the USAID Resilience in the Limpopo Basin Programme (RESILIM). The conference aimed to identify opportunities and solutions that biodiversity data presents for sustainable development in Africa and highlight the relevant tools and resources that are available for effective sharing of biodiversity data in Africa.

A team of delegates from UNEP-WCMC attended the conference and presented the Centre’s knowledge in a number of sessions. Eugenie Regan, Senior Programme Officer at UNEP-WCMC, reported the findings of UNEP-WCMC workshops that identified barriers to data sharing and found solutions that could remove them. At another session where a number of organizations presented the networks and resources that are available and ready for delegates to use, Tim Wilkinson, Head of Informatics at UNEP-WCMC, presented some of the tools and resources developed by UNEP-WCMC.

Jon Hutton, Director of UNEP-WCMC, facilitated a session on formulating a vision and goals, while Max Gomera, Deputy Director, UNEP-WCMC facilitated the discussion on what biodiversity information is for. The conference culminated in the announcement of an action plan that will mobilize and mainstream Africa’s policy-relevant biodiversity data, and forge international partnerships to implement it.

The Africa Rising Conference compliments a global effort currently being made to establish a set of sustainable development goals as part of the post-2015 development agenda. The conference and the solutions it offers not only places sustainable development on the agenda in Africa, but presents options and learning opportunities that could be put into practice elsewhere in the world.

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