Millions in Conservation Investments Offered at IUCN Congress

IUCN Director-General Julia Marton-Lefèvre addresses the participants at Barcelona. (Photos courtesy IUCN)

Marton-Lefèvre was addressing more than 8,000 specialists from the conservation community, governments, nongovernmental organizations, academia, private sector, women and indigenous groups who have gathered in Barcelona for the IUCN's World Conservation Congress, held once every four years.

"In the last four days the call to protect the planet has been heard from both government leaders and the NGO community," says Valli Moosa, president of IUCN. "Environmental concerns are now at the top of the decision-makers priority list."

While the world is entangled in the turmoil of a financial crisis, at the World Conservation Congress civil society, environmentalists, governments and business have been defining a different way forward.

The 10 day conference opened Sunday and even during these difficult financial times, it has been the occasion of announcements of substantial investments in conservation funding.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is committing $50 million to help conservation groups working in eight biodiversity hotspots preserve biodiversity in the face of climate change.

The eight places all have high concentrations of species, many of which are found nowhere else and all are under extreme threat. They include the Lower Mekong, Eastern Himalayas, and Melanesia in Asia and the Pacific; Madagascar and the Albertine Rift in Africa; and the Insular Caribbean and southern and northern Andes in Latin America.

"The scale and urgency of the climate change problem demands that the international conservation community step up its efforts," said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton told conference participants in Barcelona. "It is clear that for conservation to succeed in the face of climate change there must be shared science, coordinated action, and the capacity for rapid response, backed up with increased financial resources."

The $33 million Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund was announced Thursday. It was established by Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who "hopes to make a genuine contribution to species conservation worldwide" when the fund's operations commence by January 2009.

The focus of this fund will be global and eligibility for grants will extend to all plant and animal species conservation efforts, without discrimination on the basis of region or selected species.

Announcing the fund Thursday in Barcelona, Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, managing director of the Emirates Wildlife Society, said, "It is not just species, but species conservation as a whole, that is endangered. And by that, I don't mean the threats facing individual species and habitats, but the predicament facing species conservation as a discipline, and its declining status as an environmental priority."

"Too often, species conservation is expected to benefit from the trickle down effect of our efforts to address the world's bigger picture environmental issues, and is not being addressed in its own right," said Mubarak.

Dignitaries in the front row at the opening of the IUCN World Conservation Congress from left: Valli Moosa president IUCN, Prince Albert of Monaco, Felipe, Prince of Asturias (Photo courtesy IUCN)

A new project was announced today that will encourage businesses that have built their brands based on threatened species to invest more in the preservation of their natural habitats. The Save Your Logo campaign intends to attract private sector involvement and build broad public support to sustain biodiversity.

The Global Environment Facility will invest $5 million to launch the pilot phase of the project and will work with the World Bank and IUCN, and in cooperation with the Belgian NGO Noe Institute, to leverage conservation co-financing from the private sector.

"Many corporations have profited dearly from the hundreds of animals and plants they have built their brands around. Given the biodiversity crisis facing the planet, it is probably time to give back some of it so that their logos won't disappear forever," said Monique Barbut, chief executive and chairperson of the GEF.

An agreement on principles guiding forest management in view of climate change was announced by a group of 250 that includes representatives of governments, forestry companies, trade unions, environmental and social groups, international organizations, forest owners, indigenous peoples and forest-community groups.

The Forests Dialogue's Initiative on Forests and Climate Change specifies that sustainable forest management that reduces deforestation and degradation and that actively supports the livelihoods of millions of forest-dependent communities must now be one of the world's highest priorities. The group said in a statement, "This is because forests and forest products have the unique ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, capture carbon, and lessen peoples' vulnerability to climate change."

Stewart Maginnis, head of the IUCN Forest Conservation Program, said the group "not only agreed on the pivotal role that forests can play in mitigating climate change but also mapped out a consensus action plan on concrete next steps. We now ask the world to work with us in putting these guiding principles into action."

Other far-reaching agreements were concluded this week. Agreement on key principles on high-seas governance were achieved and new working relationships with fishermen's associations and conservation groups were established.

With initiatives such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, which presents a "comprehensive and compelling economic case for the conservation of biodiversity," according to its author Pavan Sukhdev, a senior figure in Deutsche Bank, collaboration between the conservation and business worlds is taking on new strength.

"What we have seen is a defining moment in bringing different perspectives together and, in some cases, developing consensus that will have an important and long-lasting impact," says Bill Jackson, deputy director general of IUCN.

"We heard about new facts, mostly negative, and about new science and solutions. I think we are setting a different and much more productive way to deal with fundamental conservation issues," Jackson said.

The World Conservation Congress now enters its second phase, where IUCN's members will elect a new president and Council and vote on the resolutions which will guide IUCN's work for the coming four years.

Based in Gland, near Geneva, in Switzerland, the IUCN is the world's oldest and largest global environmental network. It is a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organizations, and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists and experts in some 160 countries.

IUCN's work is supported by over 1,000 professional staff in 60 offices and hundreds of partners in public, NGO and private sectors around the world.

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