ASEAN renews partnership with IUCN on regional support for biodiversity
27 October 2021— The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity has renewed its partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), providing further support to the ASEAN and its Member States in achieving their goals in line with the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and the region’s recovery framework.
ACB Executive Director Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim and Dr. Dindo Campilan, regional director for Asia of the IUCN, led the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in a virtual ceremony on Wednesday following the final session of the webinar series on sustainable financing of the ASEAN Heritage Parks.
“As two organisations whose mandates are focused on conserving biodiversity through capacity development, information and knowledge sharing, and synergy development, we formalise again a partnership that is poised to reinforce our efforts,” Dr. Lim said.
Dr. Campilan emphasised that the assets and strengths of the ACB complement those of IUCN. IUCN is a global authority on the status of the natural world, composed of 1,400 government and civil society organisations with more than 18,000 experts.
“It’s becoming urgent that we work together and that organisations, such as the ACB and the IUCN need to build synergy because it is only by looking both at our strengths that we can contribute to our planetary problems,” Dr. Campilan said.
The ACB and the IUCN first embarked on a partnership through an MoU in 2016. The IUCN welcomed the ACB as an official associate member of Asia Protected Areas Partnership (APAP) in 2019, supporting efforts in the region to identify innovations and solutions in addressing biodiversity loss and to effectively manage protected areas and the ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHPs).
Among the slated activities under the ACB-IUCN cooperation are the conduct of the 2nd Asia Parks Congress in May 2022 in Malaysia and the 7th AHP Conference in October 2022 in Indonesia.
The two organisations will also work closely on the Indo-Burma Ramsar Regional Initiative, which seeks to ensure the effective implementation of the Ramsar Convention in the Indo-Burma region; as well as the preparation of the new situation analysis of the intertidal wetlands of the Yellow Sea.
The ACB and IUCN also pledged to advance the region’s adoption of the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas, the first global standard of best practice for area-based conservation.
