Side Event
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN ASIA PACIFIC APFED SHOWCASE EXPERIENCE
Organizer
UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Date and Time
19 October 2012 13:15 - 14:45
Meeting
Eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 11)
The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by 193 countries, explicitly recognizes that biodiversity is the foundation of economic productivity, prosperity, sustainable development, and ultimately, poverty eradication. It calls for ecosystem services to be incorporated into national accounting systems in order to account for their contribution to the economy. Currently, the reversal of biodiversity loss and ecosystem services degradation is not incorporated into development strategies, sectoral or intersectoral policies and budgetary processes. Poor communities throughout the region disproportionately depend upon the primary products of bio-diverse ecosystems for their subsistence needs, and thus, suffer greatly with the loss of biodiversity. Action (or inaction) in this capacity over the coming years will determine whether the Asia Pacific region will continue to decrease poverty levels beyond this century. Why an APFED Showcase Side-Event at COP-11? The CBD has long emphasised the need for integrating biodiversity and poverty agendas. The new post-2010 Strategic Plan placed considerable emphasis on the need for mainstreaming: poverty and other development issues need to be better integrated into the biodiversity conservation agenda and vice versa. This approach represents a major challenge – both for policy makers and practitioners – but without it we seriously limit our chances of addressing either of these global priorities. Creating simultaneous conditions of biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation cannot be done without addressing the current development model. Here lies most of the root causes of the current biodiversity crisis as well as structural socio-economic problems. By consequence, a new development model is needed for real solutions. The CBD COP-11 in Hyderabad, India provides a key opportunity for the international community and policy-makers to share ideas and exchange knowledge and experiences in implementing projects and programmes designed to address the biodiversity-poverty link. COP-11 also provides a forum to identify best approaches to harmonizing conservation and poverty initiatives. The Asia Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED) Showcase Programme is designed to support stakeholder-driven projects that aim at innovation in policy development, technology application, social mobilization and partnership building for sustainable development. The Showcase Programme highlights projects which are creating enabling conditions at the community level for poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation. The projects promote societal transition to a Green Economy, which recognizes the value of, and invests in, natural capital. The featured projects have identified an array of success factors, linking direct actions to concrete outcomes in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. Community knowledge and involvement, optimization of local resources, investment in alternative livelihoods and technologies are just several of the factors what have proven to increase positive outcomes. Goals and Objectives of the Side-event The overall goal of the APFED Side-event on Biodiversity and Poverty alleviation is to provide a knowledge sharing platform to discuss the successes and lessons learned behind approaches to projects and programs which aim to link these critical issues. One of the main objectives of the event is to address APFED Showcase projects, highlighting community level actions and technological innovations which achieved positive results in linking biodiversity and poverty alleviation. The event aims to facilitate interaction between experts concerned with the management of such types of initiatives. The side-event programme will facilitate knowledge sharing on this topic and be organized around specific APFED Showcase projects which offer valuable insights into approaches to biodiversity and poverty alleviation at the local level through: • Introduction of Alternative livelihoods • Solutions to Human-wildlife conflicts • Community forestry for poverty alleviation Expected Side-event Results 1. Knowledge sharing from APFED experts to governments and civil society on approaches to biodiversity and poverty alleviation 2. Contribution to understanding of biodiversity, economics and poverty interlinkages 3. Provision of innovative inputs to the COP-11 dialogue 4. Renewed commitment to the cultivation of partnerships which create a working interface between policy-makers, research institutes and field actions 5. Replication of the successful biodiversity-poverty alleviation initiatives within other regions and on a global scale