Side Event

Key Biodiversity Areas as a basis for national protected area gap analyses

Organizer
Conservation International & Birdlife International

Date and Time
14 February 2008 13:15 - 14:45

Meeting
Second meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Protected Areas (WGPA 2)

As part of the Program of Work on Protected Areas, the CBD has mandated national protected area gap analyses to assess how well protected areas conserve biodiversity, and where the highest priorities are for expanding and reinforcing existing protected areas. As 2010 approaches governments may be seeking tools to help them meet the obligation to conduct national scale gap analyses. To this end, BirdLife International and Conservation International will co-host this side-event to illustrate how Important Bird Areas (IBAs) and Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) more generally can help fulfill the 2010 target for protected area gap analysis. IBAs (for birds) and KBAs (more generally) are sites of global significance for biodiversity conservation, identified using globally standard criteria and thresholds, based on the occurrence of species requiring safeguard at the site scale; they thus provide an effective, justifiable, and transparent set of conservation targets from which a gap analysis can be conducted. The KBA criteria have been defined such that they can be easily and consistently applied across all biogeographic regions and taxonomic groups. They are designed for application through a national- or regional-level, bottom-up, iterative process, involving local stakeholders, to maximize the usefulness and the prospects of implementation of the resulting site priorities. Through a series of four presentations, we will illustrate how IBAs and KBAs can be used as a basis for protected area gap analysis, and also will show examples of countries that have effectively used IBAs and KBAs in gap analyses to identify priority gaps for protected area expansion. Participants will have an opportunity to receive an advanced copy of the publication, "Identification and gap analysis of key biodiversity areas: targets for comprehensive protected area systems".