Knowledge Management

Among the strategies that are suggested in section III of the document, which ones do you think are the most effective, and why?  What other strategies should be considered?

From Eric Wiedmer, national reporting expert, Switzerland, NatureConsult

An ambitious, measurable, relevant and transformational post-2020 global biodiversity framework will require significantly increased cooperation at all levels, moving beyond the corridors of environment ministries to include relevant Ministries that deal with the drivers of biodiversity loss for example land use change, climate change, pollution, natural resource use and exploitation, or invasive alien species. The management of the collaborations and especially the associated knowledge is critical for the success of the post-2020 GBF.

Against this background, I see the four strategies suggested in section III of the document as being equally important and also mutually supportive.

An issue which received little attention so far is how knowledge can be transferred from the global to the nation level and vice versa to promote the effective use of it at all levels and to avoid duplication of efforts (e.g. how can Parties benefit from global knowledge for national policy making and how can Secretariats benefit from high quality national knowledge to assess and bring forth the implementation of their respective strategic plans?). A way forward to foster such transfers could be to make global and national level knowledge management systems interoperable.

The Data Reporting Tool for MEAs – DaRT, for instance, provides Parties with private and secure national working spaces in which they can organize Data data/information/knowledge in relation to their NBSAPs and retrieve it according to the strategic goals and targets of biodiversity-related conventions to serve multiple reporting purposes. The DaRT national working spaces are to date automatically prefilled with relevant information from InforMEA. This interoperability will be extended to the CBD CHM/Bioland, the online Reporting System ORS (used by several biodiversity-related conventions) the UN Biodiversity Lab and will allow the automatic import of relevant information from the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP) and the target tracker Tool which is being developed as a response to the new post-2020 GBF.
For further information on DaRT, please visit its homepage: https://dart.informea.org or see the leaflets attached.

Thanks.
Do you have French version?
Séverin TCHIBOZO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/s%C3%A9verin-tchibozo-85506851/
https://scholar.google.fr/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=fr&user=U95ezowAAAAJ
Centre de Recherche pour la Gestion de la Biodiversité (CRGB)
04 B.p. 0385 Cotonou, BENIN
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E-mail: s.tchibozo@crgbbj.org ou tchisev@yahoo.fr
Skype : sverintchibozo
https://www.crgbbj.org

Juana Vera Delgado from Global Forest Coalition.
A key strategy to enahnace knowledge management is to include/support indigenous people's and women's knowledge for biodiversity management and conservation. Alternatives they develop to curve biodiversity loss. Some links and experiences and lesson learned, to this respect, are listed bellow:
- Women's rights and traditional knowledge: https://globalforestcoalition.org/womens-rights-kyrgyzstan/
- Our biodiversity, our food, our health: https://globalforestcoalition.org/sri-lanka-ccri/
- Large-scale cattle farming, its effects on biodiversity: https://globalforestcoalition.org/forest-cover-58/
- Community conservation is vital to biodiversity: https://globalforestcoalition.org/community-conservation-is-vital-to-biodiversity-security-for-indigenous-peoples-of-kenya/

Hi, this Evelyn Vera with the Mexican Government.

In line with some of the comments above, I would like to highlight the importance of including two key aspects in these strategies.

1) It is important to consider subnational governments, and not only how knowledge can be transferred from the global to the nation level but also to the local level, and vice versa.
2) Also, IPLC and traditional knowledge should have a stronger presence in these strategies, both as source and also recipients of knowledge.

Hi - this is Mike Gill (Co-Chair of GEO BON and Director of NatureServe's Biodiversity Indicators Program).  In support of the statements made so far and the elements framed in the draft Knowledge Management Component, one of the most important elements with regard to framing knowledge management to support implementation will be to develop more scalable biodiversity observation data that allows for both the unbiased aggregation of national data and disaggregation of global data utilizing common standards.  This approach is being employed with GEO BON's Essential Biodiversity Variables and the related indicators produced and will allow for more consistent tracking and reporting on targets from national to global scales.  Furthermore, systems as mentioned (both existing - e.g. the BIP Dashboard, DaRT, UNBL, etc.) and developing (e.g. regional Biodiversity Indicator Dashboards for the Arctic, ASEAN Region and Tropical-Andes and related national Dashboards) are means by which we can better connect biodiversity data with quantifiable indicators that can streamline target tracking and reporting.  As noted with the significant gaps (Temporal, spatial, taxonomic) in biodiversity data which limits our ability to track targets, national investments in biodiversity observations are needed as an essential component of the new Framework.

Greetings from the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). Thank you for giving us the opportunities to participate in this discussion forum.

We appreciate the well-structured descriptions of the strategies but would like to highlight that technologies are not equally available and accessible to all the stakeholders to generate, discover and collect, organize and share, and use and apply knowledge across the regions, countries and communities. For instance, 27 (d) states that “Developing local and national capacity … by incentivizing the collection of data and information…”, but it may be difficult to increase capacity only by providing incentives for the stakeholders without some IT-related infrastructure in some cases. While the knowledge management community has been increasingly digitized, the digital divide still remains today. This is an important area where more strategic planning should be put in place.

Furthermore, while it is important to facilitate knowledge discovery and collection and enhance knowledge sharing to achieve the goal, it is also crucial to give careful consideration to ethics of data collection and information sharing and protecting the rights of (traditional) knowledge holders and intellectual property rights. The current draft has no mention of this, so we would suggest inclusion of some guiding principles or any strategies to ensure the rights of knowledge holders are reasonably protected.

Dr Mohamed Handaine  (Maroc) Président du comité de coordination des Peuples Autochtone d'Afrique (IPACC). Je voudrais d'abord saluer les participants de ce forum pour leurs contributions pertinentes.
La communauté internationale (CBD-CCNUCC-UNESCO...) est consciente aujourd’hui de l'importance des Savoirs Traditionnels pour la sauvegarde et la préservation de la biodiversité et la contribution à atteindre l'objectif "vivre en harmonie avec la nature". Ce forum montre clairement cette conviction. En ajoutant à ce qui a été proposé dans l'article, tous les acteurs de la biodiversité, les Etats partis, les experts, les peuples autochtones et communautés  locales ... sont confrontés à des défis majeurs, dont les quelles il faut se pencher d'urgence à établir des feuilles de route participatives et inclusives pour les dépasser. Parmi ces défis je propose trois qui me semble très importants:
1. La  mise à niveau de la législation nationale relative à la protection  des savoirs traditionnels. C’est un chantier très important qui doit être mise en place le cas échéant par les états partis.
2. Promouvoir les langues autochtones qui véhiculent et transportent  ces savoirs, car la disparition de ces langues entraîne  la disparition de ces savoirs traditionnels. La décennie de l’année internationale des langues autochtones (2022-2032) pourrai être une occasion historique pour sauvegarder ces savoirs traditionnels.
3. Le plus grand défi c’est l’enregistrement et la codification  de ces ST, cela nécessite des campagnes de renforcement  des capacités des Peuples Autochtones et des communautés locales à fin de les intégrer dans le projet. Et d’ici 2030 au moins 50./. des ST  doit être recensée et codifiée, et un plan stratégique national visant la restauration des ST doit être aussi mis en place. Ainsi comme le mentionne l’article la garanti totale des droits des détenteurs de ces ST.
Ce sont les trois défis majeurs que doivent être dans l'ordre du jour des partis prenants et tous les acteurs de la biodiversité.

AHMAT ABAYA ABDRAMANE

State Engineer in Ecology and Environment / National Focal Point of the Convention on Biological Diversity / CHM Focal Point / Focal Point of the Cartagena Protocol of the Republic of Chad.

Good morning all

Knowledge management is an inescapable concept for a better transmission of information at all levels.

In Chad, the search for reliable data is based on a fundamental problem almost in the entire administrative field, including the field of the environment and biodiversity.

There are websites in Chad for the exchange of information in the field of the environment, climate change and biodiversity, but feeding, securing and monitoring these mechanisms remain a major difficulty. Apart from these problems, there are also some difficulties in inventorying natural resources at the national level.

The CHM remains an effective tool today for the exchange of information on biodiversity, and it is imperative to continue to strengthen the capacities of this structure and also those of the parties and parties to better develop this tool. The new global framework should address such information transmission mechanisms such as CHM and BCH for good knowledge management on biodiversity.

In addition, it is important that the new framework should take into account the management and securing of traditional and indigenous knowledge. This must be done by sensitizing and building the capacities of local and traditional populations.

AHMAT ABAYA ABDRAMANE

State Engineer in Ecology and Environment / National Focal Point of the Convention on Biological Diversity / CHM Focal Point / Focal Point of the Cartagena Protocol of the Republic of Chad.

Good morning all

Knowledge management is an inescapable concept for a better transmission of information at all levels.

In Chad, the search for reliable data is based on a fundamental problem almost in the entire administrative field, including the field of the environment and biodiversity.

There are websites in Chad for the exchange of information in the field of the environment, climate change and biodiversity, but feeding, securing and monitoring these mechanisms remain a major difficulty. Apart from these problems, there are also some difficulties in inventorying natural resources at the national level.

The CHM remains an effective tool today for the exchange of information on biodiversity, and it is imperative to continue to strengthen the capacities of this structure and also those of the parties and parties to better develop this tool. The new global framework should address such information transmission mechanisms such as CHM and BCH for good knowledge management on biodiversity.

In addition, it is important that the new framework should take into account the management and securing of traditional and indigenous knowledge. This must be done by sensitizing and building the capacities of local and traditional populations.

Rob Hendriks, NFP-CHM, The Netherlands.

In response to the opening question of this discussion thread (regarding the effectiveness of the four strategies to enhance knowledge management in support of the implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework):

Strengthening the fourth strategy (enhanced use and application of knowledge) to my opinion will be the most effective action to support bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Of the four strategies mentioned, it is the least developed one and without it the efforts invested in the other strategies are in vain.

Good afternoon colleagues,

Strategies to enhance knowledge management to support the post 2020 GBF should consider ways of collecting traditional knowledge information in an appropriate way with clear acknowledgements of the source.

kind regards,
Ntakadzeni

Han de Koeijer, scientific assistant at RBINS
The four strategies are all equally important as mentioned by Eric Wiedmer in his earlier post. I also agree with Rob Hendriks that the fourth strategy (enhanced use and application of knowledge) is crucial if we want to bend the curve.

This has been recently demonstrated in Belgium when a Minister, against the advice and reports of the unique biodiversity values of an area, proposed to convert it into a business park.

It would be good if there can be some strategies in the new framework that can take into consideration provisions for securing and traditional and indigenous knowledge. There is a growing international recognition that Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can be a useful source of information to complement modern scientific knowledge (MSK) in the management of natural resources.

Grégoire Dubois, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

I copy here again the four stages of the knowledge management cycle that are subject to a strategy

(a) Promoting knowledge generation;
(b) Facilitating knowledge discovery and collection;
(c) Enhancing knowledge organization and sharing; and
(d) Promoting the effective use/application of knowledge.

If the four elements cited in the document are critical, the one about "Promoting the effective use/application of knowledge." is essential and probably the one to focus on in priority to effectively halt the loss of biodiversity. 

Understanding the full process of the transformation or raw data into more complex knowledge products is at least as important as understanding  if and why a specific knowledge product has been used and what triggered a response from policy and decision makers.

In contrast to the three other elements that, to a large extent, can find technical solutions, the understanding of how and why knowledge is used requires that local social factors and psychology are understood.

Mathias Bertram (GIZ Advisor for German Federal Ministry for Environment, participating in own capacity as expert)

I would agree to the previous statements (in particular from Rob Hendricks, Han de Koeijer and Grégoire Dubois) that the 4th strategy d) ‘Promoting the effective use/application of knowledge’ requires a different attention especially under the ‘whole of society approach’ for the Post-2020 GBF. As mentioned in para 12: …”knowledge management would not be effective if only technology aspects were addressed and not the process and people-related aspects”.

This means that key strategic actions for effective knowledge use have a clear social dimension and and should therefore recognize and reward knowledge holders and champions across society, strengthen citizen science and practitioners approaches (including communities of practice, cooperative learning systems) and building on existing governance mechanisms. 

In would be good if Chapter III and Annex I could provide specific guidance for governments and non-government actors how to incentivize the engagement of various actors in knowledge management in particular to develop a better culture of knowledge sharing and application.

In Section A: Promoting knowledge generation, key strategic actions a), c) and d) are acceptable. The statement for b) is a bit vague and it would help to clarify the kind of work being referred to.

Suggestion:
Include a statement that addresses knowledge generation from existing datasets. Assuming that the data quality is acceptable, some datasets may  have added-value in that the data may be useful for other purposes that it was not originally intended. E.g. in Jamaica through a Biodiversity Information for Development Project , we found that a wildlife research permit database, used to monitor authorized research, contained data on types of species research and occurrence that could be useful for inventorying and mapping of not only species but also research effort.