This event was held to launch “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)” reports, which present findings from a global study on the economics of biodiversity loss. Ibrahim Thiaw, UNEP, explained that the TEEB study was spearheaded by Germany and the European Commission in response to a proposal in 2007 by the G8+5 Environment Ministers.

Hideki Minamikawa, Japan’s Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Environment, on behalf of Japan’s Minister of Environment, said TEEB could be a revolutionary measure to trigger a new means to facilitate poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, CBD Executive Secretary, stressed the importance of integrating findings from TEEB into the 2011-2020 strategic plan for the CBD and the next generation of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.

Pavan Sukhdev, TEEB Study Leader, emphasized that TEEB is not a cost-benefit analysis of the Earth. He explained that TEEB recognizes that biodiversity has many different types of values, not all of which can be given a price tag. He added that market solutions represent only a small fraction of the economic solutions available to value biodiversity.

Sukhdev highlighted key findings from the TEEB study, including that: nature’s value must be made visible; better management requires better measurement; incorporating ecosystem services values into policy is particularly critical for the world’s poor because they depend heavily on ecosystem services for their livelihoods; and ecosystem conservation and restoration should be evaluated and pursued in support of climate change. He introduced a partnership between TEEB and MOFILM, a global community of filmmakers, from which 25 TEEB-related films have been selected and will be made available online.

Nicola Breier, German’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, said stakeholders increasingly understand that conserving biodiversity can yield business and saving opportunities, while biodiversity can also have a hard economic value. She said the second phase of TEEB requires implementing the reports’ findings.

Karl Falkenberg, European Commission, on behalf of the European Union, said TEEB demonstrates the enormous opportunities provided by nature. Supporting Falkenberg, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, said biodiversity concerns will not be mainstreamed in the absence of strong economic arguments. He encouraged parties to remove brackets in negotiating text to ensure that biodiversity is adequately addressed in national accounting.

This event highlighted the status, trends and predictions of future changes in biodiversity as outlined in the Global Biodiversity Outlook-3 (GBO-3).

Jo Mulongoy, CBD Secretariat, provided a summary of the GBO-3 process and the CBD Secretariat’s perspective, noting that GBO-3 was based on: 110 national reports; a biodiversity indicators partnership; a biodiversity futures study; and 500 scientific papers. Mulongoy said the document was launched on May 10, 2010.

Damon Stanwell-Smith, UNEP-WCMC, overviewed the status and trends in biodiversity as highlighted in the GBO-3, noting that the 2010 biodiversity target has helped stimulate action to safeguard biodiversity. He also said that actions taken to implement the CBD have not been on a sufficient scale to address the pressures on biodiversity, resulting in a general decline in biodiversity.

Henrique Pereira, University of Lisbon, spoke about the global scenarios of biodiversity change in 2010. He noted that scenarios can be useful tools for comparing futures under different policies and societal choices. Pereira suggested that with the right policies, forest area, marine ecosystems and freshwater systems can be improved by, inter alia: using land more efficiently; mitigating climate change; improving fisheries management; and developing integrated ecosystem approaches.

Paul Leadley, University of Paris XI, discussed tipping points, which will result in shifts in geographic areas around the world that have dramatic and irreversible negative impacts on ecosystems services and biodiversity. He focused on the Arctic tundra and ocean, the Amazon basin and the Indo-Pacific region. He explained that while the Arctic tipping point is inevitable yet delayable, the collapse of the Amazon forest can be stopped by implementing effective management strategies, such as by implementing REDD+ initiatives.

Participants discussed: choosing an effective baseline for a 2020 biodiversity target; the importance of creating targets that are aspirational; the gap between policy and the status of biodiversity; and focusing policy on the correct drivers of biodiversity loss.

This event highlighted the importance of the International Coral Reef Initiative’s (ICRI) work in strengthening regional cooperation to better coordinate coral reef management.

Tsunao Watanabe, Ministry of Environment of Japan, noted that coral reefs have a high vulnerability to climate change and, stressing the importance ICRI in conserving coral reefs, called for organizations and countries to be more involved and cooperative with ICRI going forward.

Outlining the damage to coral reefs that has already taken place, Jean-Pierre Thébault, French Ambassador for the Environment, noted that ICRI has been a driving force behind scientific, government and civil society efforts to increase capacity to manage and protect corals.

Faleafaga Toni Tipamaà, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Samoa, noted that Samoa will be hosting the upcoming ICRI general meeting, which will revise ICRI’s plan of work going forward.

Vo Si Tuan, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, said that although the importance of coral reefs is widely understood, differences in interests can lead to challenges in harmonizing coral reef management approaches.

Yoshihiro Natori, UNU-IAS, outlined a number of activities undertaken by ICRI in the East Asian region, lamenting the lack of continuity in discussions in the period between ICRI workshops that had taken place over the intervening 10 years. He noted that there is still a need for regional-level cooperation, which can be supported by ICRI.

Christine Dawson, US Department of State, presented a case study on the invasion of lionfish in the Caribbean region. She outlined efforts to address the lionfish infestation, including developing a market for its consumption, but stressed that there is no coordinated regional response among affected countries to eradicate the species. She noted the involvement of ICRI to convene a workshop to discuss best management practices and develop a coordinated regional response.

Julien Calas, French Fund for Global Environment, noted the Fund’s work to support sustainable management and conservation of coral reefs in the Pacific region.

This event addressed how the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) could further support parties in their implementation of the CBD.

Olivier de Munck, CBD Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM), said the GBIF will be most useful if it helps the CHM first to achieve its mission of helping parties implement the Convention by providing effective information services and second to expand the CHM’s network at the partner level. He noted that GBIF could provide data to enhance both the CBD and national CHM websites in answering key biodiversity questions, such as: where is species loss occurring; what geographic areas are impacted by invasive species; and can we predict invasions from invasive species?

Samy Gaiji, GBIF, noted that GBIF’s framework is based on three principles: monitoring the status of biodiversity; policy development; and conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. He stressed that all of this is underpinned by data availability. He said that it was important to find out the information needs and challenges of parties, stating that national-level capacity must be addressed. He emphasized that GBIF provides information and a free global infrastructure that should be leveraged.

Joanne Daly, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, presented on the Atlas of Living Australia, saying that it is a platform for biodiversity reporting within the country. She said the platform has a wide number of participants and provides tools to support species identification, conservation and land-use management and education. She highlighted that with support from GBIF, the Atlas was able to benefit from a rapid start-up as the technological backbone was already in place.

Participants discussed the need for the CBD to address the uniformity of data and extend partnerships beyond the CHM AND GBIF.

This event examined the role of local-level actions for achieving the goals of the CBD. It also presented results from the Nordic project “Local Contributions to Meet the 2010 Target,” in which Nordic municipalities committed themselves to carry out projects relevant to the 2010 biodiversity target.

Noting the long-time co-existence of Nordic people and nature, Stig Johansson, Nordic Council of Ministers, said achieving the 2010 biodiversity target has been a high priority in the Council’s environmental policy. He said biodiversity and ecosystem services comprises one of the four elements of the Council’s Environment Action Plan. Johansson said the Council wants to demonstrate that addressing biodiversity loss requires not only global and national approaches but also local-level solutions and civil society engagement.

Bill Jackson, IUCN, described international progress to achieving the 2010 biodiversity target, including: the assessment of the status of biodiversity; the mobilization of new audiences, including local authorities and cities; the adoption of new policy frameworks; and the development of a broad array of indicators to monitor biodiversity trends. Noting that the target has not been met, he said this shortfall masks tremendous success stories at city, municipal and other local scales.

On local action, Jackson stated that local authorities play a key role in ensuring human wellbeing, which in turn is underpinned by ecosystem goods and services. He suggested that socio-ecological resilience is an important measure of ecosystem wellbeing and elaborated on the concept.

Terje Klokk, Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management, described the participation of 14 Nordic country municipalities in the Local Contributions to Meet the 2010 Target initiative, which was started in 2006 to encourage concrete local actions to help meet the 2010 biodiversity target. He said this network of municipalities undertook 30 local projects to halt biodiversity loss.

Klokk highlighted some of the projects, which included: the reopening of a heavily polluted urban creek; fighting alien species; turning a landfill site into pastureland; developing cultural landscapes; creating a national urban park; and developing quantifiable biodiversity plans. Summarizing lessons learned from the projects, Klokk said success factors included: rooting projects in their local settings; finding relevant expertise, which is not always available at the local level; teaching natural history to the local community; developing cooperation between the national and local levels; and taking advantage of funding opportunities.

Vibeke Andresen, Holstebro Municipality, Denmark, described three projects that her municipality undertook to contribute to the initiative outlined by Klokk: restoration or creation of 25 ponds in areas with rare amphibians to secure habitat and migration routes; introduction of grazing on 50% of meadows and bogs that had been determined as hotspots where endangered species were being overrun by other plants; and creation of free access to breeding grounds for fish along two watercourses. She emphasized that high levels of information sharing, dialogue and voluntary agreements with private owners of land where actions were undertaken were critical to these projects’ successes.

One participant noted that an important value added to the initiative was the exchange of lessons learned between the 14 municipalities involved.