A feedback workshop on the first meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the new Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework was held in Kinshasa from 1 to 3 October 2019 at the initiative of the General Secretariat for Environment and Sustainable Development, with the support of partners.

Experts from both public and private institutions in the DRC, representatives of environmental civil society organizations as well as indigenous peoples and local communities took part. The aim is to immerse ourselves in the results of the conference held from 27 to 30 August in Kenya.

The aim of this workshop was to encourage stakeholders to become involved in the preparatory process of the above-mentioned framework, as recommended in decision 14/34. And launch the consultation process on possible elements of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework as proposed.

Stakeholders shared the results of the first meeting of the Working Group for three days to select elements of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework relevant to the DRC. This will allow the DRC to better prepare itself to participate in the next meetings planned in the same framework and to share its agreed priorities in a consensual manner at the country level.

« Kenya’s meeting was important in that it reassured us that, at the international level, the priorities selected by the DRC in the field of biodiversity are beautiful and well integrated into this new global biodiversity framework. It should also be noted that the funding that will be mobilized globally for biodiversity in the next decade will be directed towards actions in line with this new framework, » said Mike Ipanga, focal point of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the Ministry of the Environment.

In practice, the new Global Biodiversity Framework is intended to succeed the Strategic Plan for Biological Diversity 2011-2020. It should therefore be based on the lessons learned from the implementation of the plan and the Aichi biodiversity objectives and the best available scientific knowledge.

« Today’s reflections have turned around three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the first of which is zero deforestation, zero species loss and a 50% reduction in man’s consumption and production footprint, » said Alfred Yoko, head of the Wildlife and Wild Flora Programme at WWF/DRC.

Olivier Kamo