A wide-reaching new partnership between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the European Union (EU) was announced on Saturday at the 16th Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), offering targeted support for the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
The longstanding partnership between the EU and IUCN has seen more than €100 million invested in locally driven solutions for biodiversity conservation since 2011. Through joint initiatives such as the Biodiversity and Protected Area Management (BIOPAMA) programme and the BEST, BEST2.0+, and BESTLIFE2030 initiatives, this partnership has supported over 350 local conservation actors to lead in on-the-ground conservation action through grants and strengthened regional hubs for biodiversity data and capacity building in five regions, spanning the African, Caribbean, and Pacific regions, and the EU’s Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories.
At a COP16 side-event hosted in the IUCN Pavilion, the impact and legacy of this partnership was celebrated, whilst a new joint programme of work was announced. The COLOURS initiative (COmmunities, Local OUtcomes, and Regional Science) will take a multi-layered approach to supporting the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) through promoting the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, strengthening CBD Centres of Excellence (institutions selected by the CBD Secretariat to bolster the implementation of the KMGBF), and supporting the tracking of biodiversity outcomes through the Nature Positive approach.
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