CHM Awards Process

Clearing-House Mechanism // CHM Awards Process

Saturday // 2.19.2022

Modalities for the Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM) Award at COP 15

Purpose

The purpose of the CHM Award is to formally recognize the Parties that have made the most significant progress in the establishment or further development of their national clearing-house mechanism websites/platforms, and it is a way to encourage Parties to make further efforts to do so. This award will be granted through a certificate signed by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Categories of Awards

There will be two categories of awards:

Best “Existing” national CHM website/platform for Parties that had already established their national CHM websites/platforms by COP 14.
Best “New” national CHM website/platform for Parties that have established or updated and relaunched their national CHM website/platform after COP 14 and prior to COP 15. 2

In each category, three awards will be granted:

The gold award for the winner.
The silver award for the second position.
The bronze award for the third position.

Certificates of Achievement

Upon recommendations of the Jury, the Executive Secretary may also grant a Certificate of Achievement to Parties that have made significant progress in the development of their national CHM website/platform between COP 14 and COP 15.

Jury

A jury will be established by the Executive Secretary and will include CHM-IAC members to ensure regional representation.
Jury members who are Party representatives will not be allowed to assess their own national CHM website.
Guidance will be provided to jury members.

Criteria

The criteria in the table below will be used to assess each national CHM website/platform.

Criteria to assess national clearing-house mechanism website

*Aspects*	*Criteria*
Content	Does national CHM website/platform provide information on: - Biodiversity in the country (including status and trends, species and ecosystems, etc.) - National strategy and action plan (NBSAP) - Progress towards achieving the national and/or Aichi Biodiversity Targets - National reporting and NBSAP processes - Biodiversity thematic areas and cross-cutting issues as well as on biosafety and access and benefit‑sharing - Implementation activities in the country - National and applicable regional policies and legislation - Regional or international cooperation, collaboration, and networking - Scientific and technical references - Case studies, assessments, reports, and other key documents - News and events - Links to other national websites - Other relevant resources
Online services	- Search engine - Online databases (e.g. on species, protected areas, experts, ...) or links to these databases - Online submission services, in particular on information related to national implementation - Collaboration tools (forums, blogs, social network services) - Social media tools - Other modern tools and resources (e.g. maps)
Layout and functionality	- Home page - Design and attractiveness of the site - Menu and navigation - Overall user-friendliness - Appearance on mobile devices - Appearance of printed pages
Visibility and usage	- Ranking after an Internet search of “Biodiversity [Country]” in the language of the site - Web statistics (page views, number of unique visits) - Availability in more than one language (if applicable) - Activities undertaken to promote awareness of the national CHM (meetings, brochures, ...) - Use of the national CHM by thematic groups and other stakeholders
Content management	- Use of a content management system (CMS) - Number of updates in the current year and the previous year - Frequency of locally-generated updates - Number of active contributors - Interaction with visitors (feedback) - Use of terminology/metadata - System(s) in place to gather and analyze statistics (based on reports provided) - Content translation (if site is available in several languages)
Governance	- Clear institutional roles and responsibilities for the national CHM - Strategy and roadmap to maintain and improve the national CHM - Coordination committee - Dedicated resources (staff, funding, etc.) for the national CHM - National collaboration, and synergies with the national planning and reporting processes - History and evolution (document, presentation, or case study) - Level of adherence to guidance for developing national CHMs (http://www.cbd.int/chm/guidance) - Information provided to the CBD Secretariat (questionnaires, web statistics, reports, etc.) (http://www.cbd.int/chm/guidance) - Information provided to the CBD Secretariat (questionnaires, web statistics, reports, etc.)