Preparatory workshop on the state of biodiversity

From August 4th to 8th, about 45 biodiversity experts from DRC gathered in an important workshop in Kisangani, hosted by the ‘Centre de Surveillance de la Biodiversité’, in collaboration with CEBioS and the Directorate of Sustainable Development of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.

The objectives were to develop a methodology for national reporting on biodiversity. Roundtables were organized about each objective of the DRC National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) to plan the centralisation of data from the different provinces of the country and to start summarizing the data. Discussed themes were : access to genetic resources, benefit sharing, promotion of payments for environmental services; the increase of resources allocated to biodiversity; the management of protected areas, biosafety, sustainable fisheries, restoration, endangered species, etc.

The state of play of biodiversity is an opportunity to prepare the seventh national report on biodiversity report, and will be useful during the revision of the NBSAP. The latter should be in line with the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, whose adoption is planned for the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (CoP-15) to be held in Montreal, Canada, from 5 to 17 December 2022. The state of play of biodiversity will be presented at the second International Conference on Biodiversity in Kisangani, in March 2023.