The Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation, National Parks of Colombia, and the CBD Secretariat's LifeWeb Initiative hosted a national protected areas roundtable on 16 June 2010 in Bogota, Colombia.
This roundtable served as a forum to examine protected area financing needs in Colombia, identified through a 3 year national planning process carried out in coordination with a set of Ministries and civil society partners. These priorities were shared as a basis to foster cooperation and coordination in support of the establishment and maintenance of a comprehensive, effectively-managed and ecologically-representative national system of protected areas, in line with the CBD Programme of Work on Protected areas.
The roundtable was attended by governments of 9 international cooperation partners, the Colombian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Environment, the Department of National Planning, as well as 3 non-governmental organizations.
Those present conveyed the desire for this forum to become an ongoing process to facilitate financial cooperation for ecosystem-based approaches to sustain biodiversity, address climate change, and secure livelihoods. It was agreed that the core group of conveners will propose a methodology and next steps to identify synergies, overlaps, and gaps in financial cooperation. Next steps will include a second forum meeting in August or September of 2010.