Anastasia Idrisova '10 (Tajikistan) and Alvin Chandra '10 (Fiji) are pleased to share their recent publication, “Convention on Biological Diversity: a review of national challenges and opportunities for implementation” in the Biodiversity Conservation Journal.
We started working on this article in 2009 whilst brainstorming in Biodiversity Conservation class at the Central European University (CEU) as part of the MESPOM program. It was also our desire to bring together ideas from our previous work at the UNDP, UNEP and GEF, and collate something useful in understanding implementation of the CBD at the national level.
Why is that even after two decades since adopting the CBD we are still talking of challenges in meeting conservation targets? What is that states do and how better can we capitalise on lessons learnt in conservation? We thus examine the various ways countries in three geo-economic groups across five regional CBD clusters implement the different provisions of the CBD. The article provides impetus on growing literature on international environmental law, and suggests that understanding implementation challenges and opportunities at the state level is imperative to halting biodiversity loss. Political, economical, and legislative sectors are more likely to show interest in CBD implementation and use it as a tool for managing biodiversity when they know the Convention processes and perceive it as a benefit.
We thank Prof. Brandon Anthony (CEU) for reviewing an earlier draft of the research, two anonymous reviewers who suggested the crucial comments useful for the improvement of this article, as well as Sujie Min and Linfeng Lu (MEPOM Alumni). We also acknowledge funding from the European Commission under the Erasmus Mundus MESPOM Program.
A definitive version of the publication can be found in Biodiversity Conservation (2011), doi: 10.1007/s10531-011-0140-y