Experts mull ways to biodiversity conservation
12 Septermber 2007

How is Asia’s biodiversity doing? This appeared to be the main question on the second day of the 4th IUCN Asia Regional Conservation Forum (RCF) being held in Kathmandu.

Experts gathered from across the globe highlighted the need to prioritize biodiversity conservation as the cornerstone of IUCN’s work on biodiversity, examining broadly the challenges and opportunities of reorienting IUCN’s heartland work in Asia on protected areas, wetlands, and coastal ecosystem management, forests and species towards developing integrated landscape approaches.

“Landscape conservation brings people together to identify, negotiate and put in place practices that optimize the environmental, social and economic benefits of biodiversity within a broader pattern of land uses,” said IUCN’s senior coordinator Dr. Sue Mainka, adding that there was a need to come up with new commitments and policy guidelines for conserving biodiversity, a paradigm that requires more effective learning across our traditional boundaries.
 
Sustainable development, ecosystem management approaches to conservation, enabling legislative frameworks were at the core of the discussions. Stressing on the need to strengthen partnerships, Dr Krishna Chandra Paudel, joint secretary of the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, opined that Nepal has embraced an integrated, holistic and participatory strategy to sustainable biodiversity conservation through pro-people and multisectoral approaches. Similarly, Dr. Dipak Gyawali of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology spoke about challenges and opportunities in achieving greater functional integration in the context of wetlands and water resources.   

While successful conservation practices were shared amongst participants, regional perspectives on the species extinction and water crisis were also discussed at length in finding synergies in IUCN’s heartland work. Other concurrent sessions saw the deliberation on IUCN membership business and strategies for addressing key regional issues such as climate change, energy and environmental security, poverty-environment nexus and greening the economy.

Julia Marton-Lèfevre, Director General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) who is also attending the forum, launched the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species that revealed ongoing decline in the numbers of flora and fauna globally. In Nepal, among a total of 1,253 vertebrate species, 78 species have been identified as globally threatened. IUCN’s flagship product, the Red List is the world's most comprehensive inventory of global conservation status of plant and animal species. It uses a set of criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies and are relevant to all species and all regions of the world.

About 400 IUCN members, experts, representatives from IUCN’s membership, commissions, secretariat and council in Asia from as many as 30 Asian countries are participating in the RCF.

For more information, please contact:

• Email:djoshi@iucn.org.np