Science Forum (25 Oct), UN Convention on Biodiversity – COP 17

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second day of the Science Policy Forum, and specifically to session 10. I'm hoping everybody had their coffee and are awake. Today's session is going to be talking about bridging science and implementation. leveraging the technical and scientific cooperation support centers to advance the KMGBF targets. I'm Garabet Kazandjian. I'm an assistant professor at the American University of Armenia. I'll be your moderator for the session today. And I'm here supported by a number of very interesting panelists. On my right hand side, we have Kristina Tabulchanas from the Global Coordination Entity. On my left, I have Grégoire Dubois from the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. Next to him, we have Pierre Spilovoy from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in France. And on his left, we have Han, whose family name I'm not even going to try to pronounce. Maybe you can.

No, no, it's OK.

OK. from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. So to start with, maybe also to make sure everybody's in the room. Oh, and we have Malodi Tau from South African National Biodiversity Institute. Yes, you're supposed to be here. So while we give Malodi a minute or two to come join the panel, can we have the Mentimeter, please? And we can have a quick icebreaker. I want to see who's in the room and what sector you represent. So if you can please scan the QR code that you see on the big screens and answer two questions for us. So, so far, academia is dominating the room.

I guess I would be here. I don't know.

You're asking me?

I work for the Secretary, I work for the UN, so where would you put yourself?

Okay, we have one policy maker, which is good for the science policy bridge. All right. Can I, just a sec. And once I figure out how the cursor moves. Is it? If I do this. Can. Can we get a bit of help, technical help? Yeah, it's not working.

We need to go down to the bottom.

Next slide. There, but I can't get the cursor. Thank you. And the second question is, to make sure everybody is on the same frequency, what does TSSC stand for? do you think from these four options? Transboundary Species Strategy Council, Technical and Scientific Cooperation Support Centers, Technology and Sustainable Science Coalition, or of course, TOPS Super Science Complex.

It's the TOPS Super Science.

I think so too. This is what I believe we do. Okay, so everybody knows the correct answer. You're in the right room. No, no, that's fine. Now we start our, I'm hoping everybody is awake and ready to start the discussion. I'm going to give the floor to Grégoire Dubois from JRC to give us a very quick and brief overview about TSSCs, how and why they were formed, what are their main objectives. Grégoire, please, the floor is yours.

Yes, good morning. I'm Grégoire Dubois, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Joint Research Centre is the European Commission's in-house science service, and we are working at the science policy interface. We were involved in, actually, we were designing in 2012, in contribution with other services from the Commission, the deployment of regional centres for biodiversity in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. I'm giving now a very EU perspective on our understanding and engagement in the TSCCs. Since 2012, we were supporting the development of these regional centres with a very clear focus on protected areas in the Caribbean, in the Pacific and the African regions. The idea was to really strengthen the technical and scientific capacity of the local authorities that were managing the data. It was very much oriented in pure technical issues. How do you process data? How do you collect data? And how do you try to take the best informed decisions on the basis of this data? So this program started in 2012, has been scaling up. We are speaking about a single total of 80 million over the years in terms of supporting these centers who are gaining traction and becoming more and more institutionalized. I think a first good step, but that was not enough because the real challenge here is not to deploy and develop the technical and scientific capacity of institutions, it's really to anchor them in the institutional landscape. It's really to create a science policy landscape that can really be effective for supporting the overall implementation of local policies, national policies, and global policies. Political opportunity to roll out these technical scientific support centers across the globe and covering all of the topics that are relevant for biodiversity, of course, this is a huge opportunity. It is really a game changer. So I wouldn't say by chance, because we invested in that in the European Union. All the centers that where we were supporting all became the all, as you know, maybe there was a call for expression of interest to become one of these regional centers, and all the centers we supported actually became selected, were selected by the Secretariat, and actually another by the Bureau, sorry, by the Bureau. to host the technical scientific centers, including one of Europe that I'm managing in partnership with the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, which is built here by Han and Jorge, and the IUCN Center for Midean Cooperation. So we have 18 of these centers in the world with this idea of providing scientific and technical support. It's about capacity building, so how can we help the regions and the countries, how can these centers help the countries around really enhance the exchanges with the policy makers that are implementing the global biodiversity framework. This is really the challenge we try to address. It's really support to the countries. It allows to have through these regional centers to take into account the regional specificities. And I think this is certainly really the game changer because people certainly speak a language that they all identify with. When we speak about in the past about the It was global targets, but everybody had different challenges and different issues to solve. So here suddenly by this regionalizations, we are speaking about similar challenges, similar problems, and this is of course similar biodiversity at the regional level. So we are talking about the same thing. So this is really a new landscape that is emerging globally now. That is, for me, I think, a real important. And I see this in Europe. I see we have been working also very hard in Europe to really reinforce our capacity to optimize exchange of information. It works very well in EU27 because we have been, since the story of the European Union, this capacity to do so. But working now with 44 countries in the context of the European TSCCs. We have so much that already exists and that we can share, and I think this is the first message in the TSCCs, is that there's already a lot available, but it's not easily retrievable, it's not easily findable. So I think it's our responsibility to make this repackaged, easily accessible to the national authorities, and I think we can all help each other. So it's not a research project. I mean, I don't see this so much as a research project. It's really making available the science that we already have in support of the implementation of the global biodiversity framework. Of course, there's still research questions that are open, so the research community will be very important to provide support in filling the gaps where there are gaps, but it's first of all providing the scientific and technical capacities to countries to implement the global biodiversity framework. For me, this is super exciting. It's the outcome of a very long process, at least from the European perspective. It's great to have quite a number of partners. Yesterday, I spent the day with the African TSEs, and to see that it's now there in the landscape, there to stay, which is something very important because thanks to the Secretariat, thanks to the COP, to the CBD, to have this long-term vision of the TSE, this is really a game changer because we move from this project-based approach to something that will have a future and that will really help change, hopefully, the effectiveness of the implementation of the global biodiversity framework. So that's in a nutshell what I wanted to share with you.

Thank you, Grégoire, for putting into perspective today's session. Maybe now I can turn to Christina. to talk about how can TSSCs within their current mandates and capacities use existing scientific knowledge and tools to implement the global biodiversity framework, so to put things in a more structural perspective from a global side. And then we can go delve into with the other panelists into the regional perspectives.

Thank you very much. As you can see from the infographic up here, this really is a network of networks. Each of the nodes there, COMEFA, CSE, Humboldt, down at their sub-regional, regional level, they also have all of their contacts. It's not only about making the knowledge available, it's also about connecting people. For example, to answer your question, The idea would be, okay, somebody from South America needs to contact someone with expertise or scientific knowledge on invasives. Somebody in Nicaragua, really, they have a problem and they really need to find out who that can help them. So then the idea would be for them to contact their center, which is in CCAD. Well, actually, nicaragua is not under there yet. But anyways, Guatemala would contact CCAD and ask them you know, can you put us in touch with some experts on invasives? We really need some help with this. So this is how the centers have this amplification effort, is by connecting people, identifying people, and many of the centers have proactively reached out to their communities, scientific communities, and organizational communities in their sub-regions to make those connections. I have Tao next to me, and SANBI, for example, they last year sent out a big call to all the countries that they work with for expressions of interest from different stakeholders and organizations to be part of the work that SANBI is undertaking as Technical and Scientific Cooperation Center. So I think this is a great opportunity for existing networks of scientists and also just individual scientists to contact their centers. If they are in a country, they can contact the center and say, look, i'm an expert in this and that, and I would be very interested if you're doing any kind of work in this area, I'd be very interested in supporting that. The NBSAP Accelerator Initiative is another example where that's happening, they're doing matchmaking. Most of our centers are also part of the NPSAP Accelerator Initiative. There's many, many opportunities. All we have to do is make those connections. I can really see basically this cascading network of networks. And hopefully, we're going to be building that. Some of the centers inside their work plans are preparing rosters of experts, for example. So this is a way where we can connect not only countries with each other, but also experts with countries and experts with each other. This is the whole spirit of the mechanism. Thank you.

Thank you, Christina. Mr. Tao, I turn to you. Maybe you could give us some concrete examples of existing partnerships and networks that Christina was talking about that are supporting the exchange of expertise, particularly in the South African context.

Thank you and good morning. My name is Makhosi Tau from the South African National Biodiversity Institute. That's the public entity of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and Environment. And yes, we are hosting ATSC and serving nine members from Southern Africa. How we begin with the exercise of bridging that gap of connecting the member states with what is available out there. We started with the capacity needs assessment because that helped us to have an understanding of the needs of the member states in terms of the challenges that they are facing. We know we are marching towards the 2030, the GBF, the targets are there, but how are we going to work together towards implementation of the NBSAP? And what was key was about what are the expertise that are there, what are the tools, what are the good practices that are there? And that was mostly from the capacity needs assessment, because with that, we were able to have an understanding of what is it that they need support on. And we were very lucky that in that exercise that we did, the member states were also very much supporting our exercises and actively engaging with us because we mapped with them, we worked with them to map what are the existing initiatives in their region, in their countries. Firstly, we had to start in their countries, and what are the existing networks and expertise that works across not just in one country, but across the region, in particular in Southern Africa, we started there. So they assisted us in mapping that. And what was interesting, as they were, most of the member states, they're talking about data availability, they do not have the data, it's difficult to report on the indicators. What was interesting is that through that exercises, they were also able to say, this is where the data is available. It may not be on all the ecosystems that they're working on, but they were also able to say to us, this is where the data is available. This is the research institutions that are holding this particular kind of data. And what they needed from SANBI TSC was to serve as a bridge, a convener, a broker, because they have an understanding that through SANBI, we can also be able to connect them with the holders of that data. But remember, some of that data, the holders of the data, they're not holding it, and the data is not readily packaged in a way that it can be used in particular for the reporting of the indicators as they were reporting their seventh national report. So there's still needs, there's still We still need some exercises where we can sit with the holders of the data to say how best can we package this so it can be used for their reporting. And through that exercises where we were identifying these networks, the commons of practice, the expertise that's available, and that was in addition to the expression of interest that we sent out there, where we were able to also map, because many organizations, over 62 of them that operate in Southern Africa, they responded to our call, even beyond Southern Africa, they responded to our call to say, yes, we can assist. So our responsibility was then to look at what came out of the capacity needs assessment and match it with the existing expertise from the expression of interest, but not only that, but also from the organizations, the many, many organizations that were mapped, because we did map so many of those organizations to understand what data are they holding, what expertise are they holding. As I speak now, we are in conversation first with GeoBON because the monitoring and reporting became a key, key priority for these member states. But the beauty of it is not only about the other organizations that are sitting out there that can assist in terms of monitoring and reporting. We worked with SunBee TSC, we worked with Namibia, Mozambique, and Malawi. They completed their ecosystem maps. They are able to package their data in a way that they can feed it into the reporting systems. So what we then were able to do among the member states themselves, connecting the member states from South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, and Angola, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa. We are connecting them with the other member states to say, how best do you do your reporting? So they can learn from them in additions to these other organizations where we are trying to connect them with them. But among the member states, they can also learn from each other. So that was a good win for us. We brought them in South Africa for that peer learning exercise. When they were doing their seventh national reports, we identified these organizations such as the GeoBON, monitoring and reporting. We want to see what we can do with GeoBON. We think there's an opportunity there. Those conversations are ongoing between GeoBON, UNEP, WCMC, and South Africa, focusing mostly around monitoring and reporting. We identified GBIF as a, there's GBIF in South Africa, in Zimbabwe, and other countries in Southern Africa. And we want, our interest now is that with the biodiversity information data that they have, How do we make it fit for purpose so that it's easier in the eighth national reporting for this member state to be able to report on that? So we are connecting with GBIF to assist with that. But in most cases, what we want to do now is to, because there's over 300 of this organization in Southern Africa. that are holding data on marine, freshwater, biodiversity, coastal data. And so we have a lot of work as the TSC, this work ahead of us in terms of how do we become that convener and the bridge between the member states and these many organizations that we've identified that have the existing data, because the data that they have raw as it is, it still needs to be packaged in a way that it can be translated into use. And we believe is then the responsibility of the TSC to facilitate that conversation. That's what we want to do. But we are starting at a regional level. So these organizations that works mostly at a regional level instead of each in going to each country, we think the big win will come if we look at those that have a regional footprint and how we can, what do they have, and how can we link them to what is, what we identified as gaps in the member states capacity needs reports. So that's going to be our, we are going to start there, but we've made inroads, but what Comforted me was the fact that the member states, we created a platform where they can

So learn from each other, because there are varying levels of, as I mentioned, the four member states, they're the ones that are far ahead in terms of the data that they have, their data infrastructure, they are far ahead. And what is it that we can share with the others what can they learn from the other member state that are already far ahead than the other ones. So that becomes our role as the TSC to facilitate that. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for that very comprehensive answer. Before I turn to you, Grégoire, about the European parallels, maybe I mix it up a bit and I'll ask Pierre about How, as a representative of a natural history museum, how do such institutions facilitate the accessibility of knowledge to TSSCs and to governments? And what concrete examples could you give, maybe success stories that you've been part of? Thank you.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the invitation in this panel. So yes, that's a good question, actually, as the French Museum for Natural History, we are involved since quite a long time, actually, in the cooperation, the technical and scientific cooperation mechanism, as we are hosting the CHM national focal point, we are hosting the national CHM. So since quite a long time, we are already working in this in this network with actually almost all the panellists throughout a lot of different projects. And how do we see actually the development of the TSCC? For us, I think it's very good news because it helps us also with some human capacity in the era of artificial intelligence. We need human, we need people. And I think maybe it's what was missing actually in the infrastructure of technical and scientific cooperation in the context of the CBD. So it's very useful to have identified institution to work with, to develop actually capacity for the countries. And so, as I was mentioning, we already are involved sharing expertise, sharing data, make available also our research infrastructure, and we really want to develop, expand that. I can share a very concrete example, actually. For example, our involvement in the COP for CBD project at the European level. So we are actively contributing to train experts all around Europe, because I think it's very important also for experts to understand what is going on in the CBD process. So we developed quite a lot of tools to help them to be present with us actually during COP. It's quite amazing actually, because we are lucky to see a lot of trainees. around these days. So that's a concrete example. We also worked with my colleagues of Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences to use actually the CHM website in connection with GBIF to develop capacity in data management. in collecting actually a specimen in the field. So that's quite a concrete example that we were developing, and I think the result is clearly showing that we are going in the right direction.

Thank you. Grégoire, I turn to you. We heard Sorry, go ahead.

Thank you. I just would like to add something, because we shouldn't forget that the TACCs were chosen because they've got an extensive network of partners and others. So that is also, as Pierre mentioned, we have a lot of networks already existing, which we use, and since we've become TACC, We are also looking for other networks to be included. But for example, existing networks within Europe we already use, like for the use of research vessels. We have got other programs on CETA, which is the taxonomic facilities that we use, and quite a lot of others that we are promoting more, especially for new countries who isn't part of this type of network if they've questions related to this. But also, we have our networks also with other TSCCs. For example, we've already heard from Sambi, and I know that Sambi has already some cooperation with France, but also other TSCCs like the one in West Africa, Northern Africa, we're already working with them, also COMIFAC. in Central Africa, and I think that's also part of the global network that we as TACCs should take into account, because it's not just that you're working in region, you should also, if you haven't got an answer to a question from your region, you can go to the other TACCs and see if in their network there can be people available. And I'll stop on that, just to add something. Thank you.

Thank you. Gregoire, I turn to you to bring us the European perspective with regards to how this coordination is set, prioritized, and also maybe some opportunities towards institutionalizing these partnerships.

Yeah, I will start from the last part, which is the institutionalization. I think this is absolutely key in the deployment of the TSCs. When you look at the collaborations We are speaking about networks. Networks are typically surviving on projects, on various funds, but they're just floating around, and they're key to scientific and technical support, but they're not institutionalized. Many initiatives are basically a one-off because we think it's a good idea, and then there is no long-term plan. Here we have the opportunity to change the landscape, and we have been doing this in European Union, and only recently, I must say, it's only since 2020 that we completely transform the European landscape. We had so many, really literally 1 billion euro research over the last five years put on biodiversity research alone in the EU. How do you capture this research and use it for policy and support of the implementation of the global biodiversity framework? Most of the research projects basically end up with data, reports, papers in a drawer that policy makers will never read, right? So we, the first action of the European Biodiversity Strategy was to create a knowledge center for biodiversity to help coordinate the interactions with the research community. We created. Not only this, but also there is now in the new course for research, there's a request to engage with the Knowledge Centre for engaging more effectively with the policy makers. So this is part of the institutionalizations of the interactions between the research community and the policy services. And I see this very much the key work to be done with the TSCCs. It's not so much, as I said, a research problem, but it's about capacity building. idea is how can we make sure that the information, that the good practices that we have learned, that we have put in place, the mechanism, the technology that we have put in place to exchange data on invasive species, for example, can really land on the desk of those responsible for the implementation of the response to invasive species, can use that effectively. So here, we develop information, we develop networks, we develop protocols, and we can easily, it has absolutely zero cost for us to share it with our partners, and it's in everyone's interest to share it with the partners, because biodiversity does not know and biodiversity challenges did not know any borders. So in Europe, we have typically a problem where we have very large members, countries that have the resources, and countries where you have very few people actually who can cover all of these grounds. How can they cover alone when you have one or two people representing actually the countries at a COP, deal with 23 targets they have to report on? they don't have the data, they don't have always infrastructure. So getting from a regional center the technical support, the technical answer, the scientific answer to do their work, of course, it's an enormous benefit for everyone. And I think this is, of course, the case for all of the countries. You have sometimes very large countries, but very few people living there. You have sometimes countries with huge biodiversity because you have complicated ecosystems and landscape. So everybody has different And I think this is something for me, a key message that I would like to pass as well. We all see the global situation is really, really complicated. There's so much competition for resources at the moment. It's becoming a real battlefield and for biodiversity. We're all struggling to find resources for dealing with our environmental challenges. Here we have a unique opportunity to pull together our resources, our capacity, to do something that can be much more effectively implemented. I will conclude with one example. We all use remote sensing pictures, and they are key for many elements of the biodiversity strategy. Where are these remote sensing pictures coming from? From NASA and from the Copernicus program mainly. I mean, there are other sources, of course, but everybody uses that because a few countries manage to pull the resources at the benefit of all the others. And I think this is exactly what the TSCCs can do at the regional centers, is that at some point we need to reinforce this regional capacity because then we'll have more resources than other centers, pool together what we can so that we can basically more effectively serve the others so that they have less burden, less reporting burdens, and We can help the administrators in reporting more effectively. We can help the authorities implement with the global diversity framework because we have pulled together the information, the tools, and even supported by a new governance and institutionalization that help them to do the work together. So really the TSCs are for me a super exciting end opportunity in all that, but we need to have to accept first that these regional centers take over some of our work. It's really a matter of trust and dialogue. And this new science policy interface still has to be really developed. It's not because you develop a technical capacity somewhere that you will have a response from the government. And I think this is the next challenge that comes. And I was discussing this today, this with the colleagues, that we have this challenge in all the continents. It's really to make sure that This interactions, the science and policy interface, is really effective in that this dialogue takes place, and this takes time. And we know policymakers never want to take the time to dialogue with the scientific community. It's a problem of communication, a problem of language, a problem of complexity. But this is key if we want to really transform and have the implementation of the global biodiversity framework, because in the end, it's not a reporting exercise that we are talking about. Of course, we want to help parties. report more effectively and have the data to report, but it's about implementing the global biodiversity, it's about global biodiversity framework, it's about driving the changes. And now we really have this opportunity, and I think it's a unique one, and really need to refocus on that.

Thank you, Guillaume. Han, I turn to you as the representative from the Royal Belgian Natural Sciences Institute. Besides TSSCs, how can existing research networks, initiatives, and in general, us as researchers, complement the efforts that are happening, make the data accessible, make it actionable, policy oriented, and maybe also support in other technical matters? What is our role as researchers in this regard?

Thank you for this question. And I first had to think about what shall I answer, because it is, like I mentioned before, there's a lot of existing networks that we already have that we are already using. But also there's other networks, like, for example, we've got here Phil from the UK, that is doing also a lot of work on it in the UK, but we didn't know about him in our current network. And this is the type of thing that they've got experience in the UK, which we do not have maybe in some of our European countries or EU countries, that we can then invite as well. to share the way that they've been doing things for the reporting of the UK so that we can learn from them on fields or targets that we do not have our own experience yet. But it's also those initiatives, we meet them up here. We sometimes, we are going to launch a call for networks and initiatives that are not part yet of the GRC network, as Grégoire has mentioned, and we're going to ask them how they can complement us for some targets where we see that our existing network hasn't got enough competence or could have some more because there's some new headline indicators that we haven't thought about or that we're still working on, like the restoration indicator, we're still working on it, but we already know that in some countries and some networks, they've already developed so we can use that. So it's also, for example, we've got also the consortium of scientific partners for the CBD, which can be used much more, especially because it's scientific institutes from all over the world. who's got their specificities in their country that we might not have thought about either. If we're, for example, we're talking about the Smithsonian, we're talking about the Humboldt, we're talking about institutes from all over the world who've got their own problems, who've got their own solutions, and we can also use those. And that's something we should not think that we as TECC know everything. No, we're just a knowledge broker. We're calling up every initiative, every network that can assist us to contact us and to help us with questions that we get from the parties to see how they have found already solutions for answers that we are looking for. For example, I also can give you the example in Central Africa, there's also a research network which is for the central Congo Basin, and which is doing quite some things. They take information from scientists from all over the world. Yesterday we heard during the capacity building forum There are a lot of countries are complaining, there's researchers coming from elsewhere, they take the data and they don't give it back. And that is exactly if you've also got regional networks with local researchers which have been working in the region, but they haven't received the information back, that is exactly the type of networks that can promote then that the information stays within the region and not like which is happening quite often that you have to go to a website which is hosted elsewhere to find information about your own country. And as Pierre also mentioned with the CHM, that is exactly what countries try to do, that if there's research project within the countries, they map them on the national CHM, they try to see how and also follow up what happens with the data and how they can use it for the national reporting. I can continue, but I'll stop here for now. Thank you.

That's an excellent point. Maybe Christina, yeah.

No, I think your answer was very comprehensive, Han. And just to say that as the global coordination entity, we too also, like Han mentioned, if someone in the region, if within the region, they can't find expertise, which I find very unlikely, because we have so many centers within the region, but sometimes it happens, especially with the SIDS. There are sometimes some issues there. There's just not enough people. We've had people in the Caribbean contact us. and we've had a hard time finding someone to support them, so we've had to go to another region. So we also play that role of trying to connect. And like we said, it's this network of networks. We're all connected. We are trying to coordinate among ourselves. We have monthly coordination meetings among all the centers. And then the centers themselves are also coordinating at the regional level. So all this coordination and constant flow actually helps. I think that's, I mean, coordination is really tough, like even within our institutions, we have a hard time. It's just because we're so time poor. Everyone is lacking time, and coordination takes a lot of time and effort. But yeah, that was pretty comprehensive, so I'm good.

Yeah, go ahead.

I just want to highlight something, actually, on those of panelists already said that, but I think we need to be aware as a research institution about our responsibility, actually. We have a responsibility because we need capacity building to succeed implementing KMGBF. So we need to be there to help countries in that regard. But we have also, so it's a question of efficiency, but we have also responsibility regarding environmental justice. We need, actually, we are producing research for people. And so we need also to be aware of that. The data, the research, everything that we are doing is for people, of course, for biodiversity as well. Actually, the TSCC are good news also for that, because it will help us catalyzing actually this research, these datas to connect with the people, with the countries that need these datas on research the most. So just want to highlight that.

Okay, until we figure out how to move to the next slide, for those who joined later, no, we don't have the QR code here. Thank you. We heard a lot about potential tapping into networks, capacity building opportunities, different nations working together, those that have already done some work could help other nations, but maybe to be able to move to the next level of capacity building and expertise, I want to also ask what have been the challenges so far? What have been the bottlenecks, the pain points? Christina mentioned about time. Grégoire, you mentioned about a lot of things to be done. Pierre, you mentioned about sometimes lack of capacity in taking action. So, I don't know if you can bring examples of concrete issues, challenges that you've seen within the TSSC network, and maybe some possible solutions of how we can step to the next level. Thank you. I open this to all panelists, so whoever has examples. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, actually, I want to share A project that we are currently developing with the French Biodiversity Agency. So we identified actually the need to help the TSCC, first at the European level, but in general in the world. on a specific target that we have capacity on, on research infrastructure on. So we are trying to develop a project about target four, actually, gathering a lot of institution around the world that we already are connected with, but also trying to define a framework to help the TSCC implement actually such knowledge hubs to help countries concretely on the field about implementing this target, and also help TSCCs to find fundings, because I think that's a key issue. So we are mobilizing actually fundings from the French Ministry of Environment to develop this kind of action. I think that could be a concrete action to help the TSCC working with this challenge.

Okay, thank you. I'm thinking about an example about the question that we see on the screen. And for example, I can, that is why I put in on question five, because so far at this moment, as European TSCC, we've only received one big question. Since we're here in COP, we received four more requests. And one request was related to how to integrate the Cartagena Protocol and all the things that you have to do for the Cartagena Protocol to put it in legislation, also to put up in place a monitoring system and research related to OGMs. And that is the question that we got. So we went to the Cartagena national focal points to see how we could help that country, but one of the problems is if you get a request, it's not easy to find people who are available at that moment to give you a reply to the request that you get from a country. You first need to find the right people, you need to find them on the right time. And that takes time. So it is something like, if you ask something from a TACC, don't expect to get a reply or an activity straight away. Because, as mentioned also by my neighbor, and I think our colleague from Sambi will say exactly this same thing, we aren't having much funding at this moment yet. But we need, first of all, to get a request to ensure that we can then look for projects or assistance, for example, for NBSAP accelerator funding or others, to get things done. So that means that the request that we received, it was during SBI, we found some people, but now we still need to find the right time, whereas for that country, they wanted the results already in eight months. And that is just not possible. So that is also something, if we're going to evaluate the TCCs in four years time, the Techno-Scientific Cooperation Mechanism, we should take that into account that first of all, we had to set it up. Now we have set it up, we know, as we heard already about capacity building needs sometimes, but also some countries, they don't know how to express their needs. Because they do not know exactly, okay, we've had the seventh national report, but they haven't replied, for example, on one target, but what do they need as capacity? So that is also one of the big problems that we face as TACC. So I hope that answers part of your question.

Yes, it does. So expectation management maybe is one, and how to ask for help and support. I think both of these points go into what you mentioned, Gregoire, about institutionalization. So if the process is clearer, maybe nation states would be coming up with the right type of requests and also right type of timeline for implementation. Maybe, yeah, go ahead, please.

Yeah, I mean, with relation to these challenges, yes, we can say a lot about resource mobilization. If you take an example of SANBI, we have all the expertise that these countries need. We really do. We have freshwater scientists, marine scientists, terrestrial scientists, biome-based scientists that work in savannah, in the fynbos, in the grasslands. We have all those, the scientists, and when we look at the capacity needs assessment and what the member states are looking for, we have that. We don't have the resources to go and support them. And we have learned from the support that we provided to Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, what it takes to do that, like, for instance, have the ecosystem map. We have lessons learned documented. We know where the departure point, what to do, where to start. So we have the capacity in Sun B that is working doing very well in the country, where there are resources, we are able to go outside. So it's such a pity that there aren't as much resources as we wish to have, because we can tap into what we have inside Sanbi to go and help others there. But we One of the, another challenge that I think is really going to be a big one, it is, is that even you can, you will have the science, and that science still needs to translate it to inform your decision making processes. That science, you must still use it to inform the implementation of the NBSAP. They've identified that as a huge gap in terms they need also that kind of support of the translation of science into policy and practice. And what we loved is when we did the expression of interest, when organizations such as IUCN, WWF International, they responded to our expression of interest, outlining what they're doing in the region, and one of the work that they identified that they are doing was on the OECM, the other effective conservation measures. And in the capacity needs assessment, target three, it ranks very high. Everybody wants to achieve that target three, and they've identified OECM as a concept that they would like to be working on. And we used that, the needs of the member states, and from the expression of interest, what TN the Nature Conservancy, WWF, IUCN, they're already doing. We were able to bring those organizations together so they can work through the TNC, because TNC has an easy access to the member states, to the CBD focal points. Through the TNC, we are able to bring the right people for the right conversation around the OECM. And so far, we've had three workshops. not just workshop for the sake of ticking a box, workshop where we look at the OECM mapping methodologies, what are the legal requirements for the implementation of this OECM. We brought the nine member states from these nine countries that we are saving. And we don't have resources. The IUCN, the WWF, they're supporting that process because they were doing it anyway. They just needed a platform where we can bring this member state together. So that is an of where the translation of science going to result into the implementation that you are talking about, and we are pleased that we are able to identify and work with what is existing out there in the absence of resources. Thank.

You. Christina, you have a question.

I actually have a question for the audience, because we're here with people that are engaged with the scientific community, with academia. And I find that the COP is a great generator of research topics, you know, through the different agenda items, there's always a lot of rich questions coming out regarding evidence and new knowledge that needs to be generated to inform these policies. And the TSCCs are also, like Tao was saying, they're working, the countries are coming and saying, look, to be able to implement our NBSAP, we need, We don't know about A, B, and C. So there's a big opportunity for the research community to tap in to these processes. And I'm wondering, because there's so many research councils, and there's grants, and there's all this, there's this whole like research machinery, I'm wondering how can that contribute to this work? Are you seeing as you're in your community explicit calls for research that will contribute to Target 8.1, 2, 3, 4? I'm just wondering, I'm asking you if you see the research community also from their side trying to create opportunities to generate knowledge and research that can feed into the NBSAPs, that can support countries in implementing the KMG-BF. I'm wondering if you've seen that, because I think that would be a fantastic opportunity to start aligning more Doing research and generating knowledge, not just for the sake of it, I know it's like sacred, but can we generate knowledge and science that's actually useful? That could feed into countries' implementation efforts because we're trying. This is a huge, ambitious, I mean, overwhelming task that we have in front of us. Thank you.

On the left, so you hear me? Yes, good. I'm Daphna Obach. I'm the executive director of the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment, which is in fact a network that might be interesting for your endeavors. We are coordinating a worldwide network of mountain biodiversity scientists. In answer to your question, I have two observations. One, when I read papers, when I review papers, there's always, or more and more, a line about global frameworks. trying to make a case for why the science is maybe relevant, but I think it's more trying hard to fit into some kind of requirements than really delivering on what you need. And I think there's a need to work with the scientific community. I have the impression that the scientific community needs help in really understanding how they can frame their research to address needs. And we have a push towards doing transdisciplinary research, innovative research, and as scientists, we try to fit into those buzzwords without really taking a step back and reflecting on whether we at all do the science that's needed to fit into those categories. And an example for us, for instance, we are doing, we started the global assessment of modern biodiversity, and we do it globally, but also by region. And there we have students working or doing PhD thesis, trying to really work with available data in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, for instance, and identifying what, how the data can be used to feed into specific targets. And I think that's an example of research that might be useful, but it's hard to really make it then feed into the global machinery, I will call it. And maybe there's the need to better understand how such research can be fed directly or how you can become aware of those very focused papers now to move your agenda. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks very much for that point. My name is Stephen Venn from the Society of Conservation Biology and Oulu University in Finland. I think that this is something that I see, that senior researchers, they become aware of the knowledge centres when they're, for example, making Horizon proposals. There, there's this text that says your proposal should have connections with the knowledge center, but you don't have to find out about them because it will happen when you get accepted. So all the ones that don't get to that stage maybe don't even have any connection with what the knowledge centers are doing. Universities as communities are really focused on research outputs and qualifications for students that then not so, it's only individuals within the community that are becoming aware of things like this. I think it's something that needs to be looked at as a process, where are we going, what we want to do, and how we're going to get there, and who we need to get involved. I think there's many gaps along the way there, but one of the things definitely is how to get the whole scientific community aware of what the knowledge centres are trying to do to support that. I mean, probably the biggest resource in the universities is the early stage researchers. and they just trust on the PIs to deal with this bit and to look for a small role for themselves. So I think anything that can get these more junior level staff aware of what's going on and looking for opportunities to become involved, the better.

Thanks a lot for this discussion. So I'm working for IBEST and I'm also part of some funding organizations such as Horizon Europe, et cetera. So for us, it really became the compass, I think, to address KMGBF issues. So as part of Horizon Europe, but in biodiversity, so the European Biodiversity Partnership, but I can also see this tendency at the global, at the Belmont Forum, for instance. So it really became something important when it comes to programming research and having some priorities. And it's especially the case of young scholars really willing to engage with CVD and trying to have an impact beyond producing excellent research. But still, we face some structural challenges, such as, for example, the assessment of research. So how do we promote the careers of such people engaging with CBD and not necessarily taking time to publish in the meantime? So we really have to change research, and I see some scientists willing to engage with CBD and policy frameworks in general, but I think decision makers should also be trained to engage with scientists. So usually they don't know what is a peer review paper, they don't know the methods behind scientific knowledge, so we need to train them. And I think TSC might also be the place maybe to create this dialogue, not only scientists moving and engaging with policy makers, but also the other way around.

Thank you. Very interesting discussion. My name is Ken Fukushi. I'm from University of Tokyo. Myself, a civil engineer. I just attended the Science and Technology in Society Forum in Kyoto just a couple months ago about talking about science and AI in business. And by diversity earlier, of course, there's real observed data, simulated data, and potentially there's AI fake data. In Japan as a country, citizen science is very much utilized in order to correct data. For example, taking a picture and whether this is an indigenous species or not, that automatically one of my country institute does. However, in the future, even professional AI, professional biodiversity people cannot recognize this is a fake or real data. And I really, KSSP, see, I mean, would like to take initiative to, I don't think it is only the biodiversity area, but also other area. But for example, like climate area, we can, it's physics actually, you know, it's much easier to kind of like check, you know, whether data is genuine or not. For example, like WCRP is doing this, you know, partially. But I really feel kind of like a fear that such kind of mixed data and validation of data, of course, in the scientific journal and database might be one of the solution. However, currently, the publisher request huge amount of the publication fee. You know, how much does it cost in order to publish one paper in science? You know, the 20,000 US dollars, you know, and one rank lower, science advances, 10,000 US dollar. You know, or if you want to subscribe it, you know, it's a huge amount of the data. I mean, the money have to go, I mean, the library have to pay. So the result, the size of their data is going to be very small because we don't have money to pay for this, no. Even Japanese research cannot pay. So I don't know how to make this kind of value system, fake system. And if data has a value, always there is some bad people who generate fake data and get money on this. And majority of data biodiversity is allocated in not urban area, but rural area. Of course, I mean, there is, i hope, I want to trust the honesty and, you know, I mean, the moral of the people. However, not always that implemented. So I just want to, you know, I mean, they proposed this issue to discuss. with the panelists, and maybe we can go this beyond the biodiversity to the other climate area, other things like, of course, i want to invite you to STS Forum if you want to come to Kyoto every October, which I'm helping for program developing. Thank you.

There was too many questions. Yeah. Maybe, yeah, maybe we still have 20 minutes, so we're going to answer everything, but maybe before we forget the questions, I'll ask the panelists if they have any comments with regards to these questions, couple of minutes, and then we take more questions. Does that make sense? Yeah, go ahead.

I might become very unpopular after this intervention. I'm going back to the networks because they're key. I just realized there's a timer, so that's very useful for me, actually. So I will try to be very concise, now that I see the timer. We were discussing the resources and how to engage with the scientific networks, right? And so I'm working for the Joint Research Center European Commission's in-house science service. We have an agency that helps reporting and doing a lot of work in the data collection. Still, it's not enough to provide the scientific and evidence required by the policy makers. So we changed the landscape by connecting with a big project, rich project, which has its own group of experts on very specific thematics. Still not enough. Why? Because there are always questions that come with that are not covered by the scientific groups that are required. So we have to reach out. So now the current model is not only Horizon Europe with all these research projects that can partly tackle with the issues that we have to challenge, but we I would say it's difficult to quantify now what will come in terms of demand, but for sure, we will have again to look outside of this existence structure of funded research. And so we are really changing at the moment this landscape. So we have now institutionalized processes by our knowledge center with space to have this dialogue between the policy makers and the scientists. And this is key because 80% of the people in the place where I work could be replaced by AI tasks because it's mainly about briefing on science. But the space for the dialogue that is required, absolutely, that will not be replaced by scientists, experts, and the policy makers that will always be needed. And actually, we realize that more and more, we need to reinforce the networks, find mechanisms that are sustainable financially to engage with these networks. maintain these networks alive, and this is where we have the biggest challenge. And actually, just after this session, I have to do exactly the same discussions about nature-based solutions, how to keep networks alive so that they can feed the policy processes. So I think this is really the remaining challenges we have because we have a lot of resources for research. We have now the mechanisms to create the science policy dialogue that is required, but we still need to feed on constant issues and challenges that are super transversal that require the networks to engage with us. So funding is an issue, But thinking that if we put all the money in one back, you know, in supporting this mega regional centers, that's not going to, that's never going to work. I think the first task is really for them to have, of course, a minimum of capacity of technical infrastructure to maintain and do the work that should not be done by all the countries because it would be just a waste of money. But it's mainly about coordination. And I think this is what we have been doing at the level of the TSCs in the European Union to make sure that we can ease the flow of the information from the science to the policymakers.

Any other comments?

Yeah, thank you. Now, I was just going back to our colleague from Tokyo, because what he mentioned about citizen science, I think that's also something we see that there's less and less funding available for continued monitoring, for basic research that is really useful for the KMGBF. I know a lot of research academia are always looking for new subjects and things like that, but for the KMGBF, we might also need data that comes back all the time, all the time, all the time. And citizen science, what we see, for example, in Belgium, is more and more, it's not the research institutes anymore, the universities to come up with new solutions, but we need people in the field as well. Because that's going to be the biggest problem. You can do a lot with AI, but if you do not have somebody who can check what is really available, then you still will not have a good answer to your question. Is the protection that we give in a national park or an OECM, is it really useful? Because, and that's also something that we, as DECC, we need examples of that, how you can use citizen science to have data that continues over 10 years. We have quite a lot of examples within Belgium for birding, but there's also need for other things. Thank you.

Yeah, one, two, three, and then we take more. Go ahead.

All right. So just, we are currently conducting, I'm Alan Amirkhanian, I'm the director of the American University of Armenia Zakopian Center for the Environment. And we're currently conducting a study on the science funding in Armenia with regard to specifically green transition, more broadly green transition, but then clearly biodiversity issues fall under that kind of category. And what we find is that, and this may be unique to Armenia, but I suspect this may be common to a lot of countries. that international obligation data research is not necessarily incorporated into national science funding. It's often seen as something donors will pay for, so it's not part of the science funding. I think that's a systemic problem that we need to engage member countries to think about this. And also, I think when it comes to the science funding calls themselves, there's never, and this probably consequence of this, there's never a mention of NB-SAF requirements. And also, Part of it is because the donors may pay for it. Part of it is because the data is expected to be coming from practitioners out in the field, the protected area, or whoever is responsible for the administration and the execution of national. So I think there's some psychosis in the system that needs to be fixed.

Yeah, thank you. My name is Phil McGowan from, I'm here with RUCN, but I also represent this network that Han mentioned, 35 UK or academics from 35 UK universities and research institutions called Cascade. And a couple of points actually on the point just made, and this is the response to Christine's provocation. I think the issue is academics will go where there is funding. And at the moment, I mean, the thing that I find of interest when Christine was setting that question is, the CBD has parties, people in those same governments will be setting the direction of research spend, and those things are independent. In the UK, we saw a great alignment when the SDGs were signed in 2015. There was a lot of research funding going for pursuing those global challenges identified by the Sustainable Development Goals. We haven't seen that subsequently. So that is something that maybe is an issue for parties to have those discussions between Departments of Environment or Ministries of Environment that are here and whoever does set those conversations. We are seeing in the UK that there is more conversation between those, two, so UK Research and Innovation and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but if there remains a mismatch over what the research spend is versus what the policy needs might be. In the UK in February, and this was not from that department, the environment department, but there was a national security assessment that identified nature as fundamental to national security. That was a government-wide assessment. So that may well lead to more money that is related to KMGBF generally, but not the specific issues that the technical and scientific operation centers will address. So on the final point, i think that they just like to make is that there's a lot of research, and I appreciate that as a senior researcher, it's difficult to carve out time, but you do get a little bit of flexibility to pursue your own interests. And I think there is a range of interest, a range of research interest around around the KMGBF in particular, and it's also in things of how to address some of these knowledge flows issues. It's not just what targets are. We've got a paper that will be published in the next couple of weeks that actually does a network analysis that suggests that the TSCCs provide the architecture for information flow, but academics are necessary to really help that flow of information. So there is some strategic research that is being taken place, that is taking place that's almost off the books in terms of we're carving out our own time to do it. But a final plea would be, let's have a look at some of this more strategic research that could help some of this connectivity and networks be a lot more efficient. As Gregoire said at the beginning, we've got a very complicated KMGBF. 11 pages, 5,000 words, four goals, 23 targets, 18 considerations, 196 parties. It's a very messy picture. There are some real strategic ways that we can cut through to find some, I think, some big wins. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm Nirmala Seonmassin. I work at the French Museum of Natural History with Pierre, who is here, and do a lot of work on the policy support. And I would share my experience, that is, that rather than seeing two separate groups of scientists, researchers on the one hand, and policymakers on the other, it's rather a continuum. And this, actually, the middle of the continuum is where we have most of what we need for the reporting. And it's more a sort of engineering kind of approach because Well, to put it in a very sort of caricature way, but researchers work rather on projects to develop new concepts, new methods, new ideas, and so on. But then you need to bring this to scale, to develop it and to maintain it, because you can produce data once, but produce the same data every year is not necessarily an academic kind of role. It's more an infrastructure, and we also need investment in that infrastructure. that will benefit scientists and researchers to develop new concepts, etc., but will also feed into what policy makers need, into the reporting for the global biodiversity framework, etc. So, and now the question, and I think it was also raised by Grégoire, is how do we share the work between the different levels, between what we need at national level and what kind of tools and methods and infrastructures, and what do we need at the TSCC level and what we can put together, mutualize, and what we still need to do at our at our own level. There is no simple answer to that. And just to finish, I have a lot to say about citizen science and what role it can bring. And so I can tease you that this will be further developed on this afternoon first panel in contact group room five. So please come and share this discussion with us. And we have lost the chair, but.

Hello, okay. I am from the University of Tokyo. I am a student representative of sustainability sciences, and I'm currently a master's student, so I thought that I would be able to kind of introduce our perspective as a student researcher in terms of the question that was publicized right now. I believe that transdisciplinary is very important keyword. I think that that was another keyword that came up in our conversation. I believe that transdisciplinary is still very new, and in these targets that we have, transdisciplinary is very necessary. So it's really hard to combine multiple fields into one and have a conclusive, deep data or review. And therefore, our university currently has transdisciplinarity and kind of that openness to mix and match the data that we have and have a conclusive qualitative and quantitative data that can be directly used into research. And I believe that maybe in terms of how we can kind of build up on the research and the expertise, just the openness of having multiple data sets and not necessarily only qualitative or quantitative being accepted is something that is very important in the current future development of research. Thank you.

Thank you, it's not really an answer to the question, but I just want to highlight a very important aspect of this process. It's very important to say that actually this process is not a vertical process, it's a horizontal process. So we are not actually in a process going top down, we are actually building partnerships, so we are all together involve for the success actually of the CAMGABF. So it's very important to learn from each other, to identify the right priorities, the right needs. It's very important to learn from each other, actually, to build capacity between the different communities, so policy maker, but also scientists, et cetera. It's also very important to take into account all kind of expertise. So we didn't mention quite a lot all the other stakeholders that have very important expertise, so indigenous people, local communities, women, youth. It's very important also for us as research institution to work with them, actually, to be able to disseminate, to catalyze actually the right expertise to match the needs. So we are not actually just sharing data as knowledge, we are building something that need to be sustainable. So it's global infrastructure, connecting people, building capacity to each other to really respond to the need for the success of the CMGBF.

Yeah, that's a good point. I'll remove my moderator hat for a second and intervene with a comment. I think what our colleague from Finland mentioned about how a lot of these Horizon projects and other research projects could feed into this is correct. And I agree with our IUCN colleague that it's very complex. A slight fear as a researcher is we're putting a lot of responsibility on researchers that already are stretched to the limit. And I think here, the infrastructure and data interoperability is very important. We cannot ask researchers to add data to 15 different platforms or databases and such, because realistically, it won't happen. So if the data is interoperable and the systems are interoperable in a way that we have a federated system where the researchers are uploading the data in one or two places, but a lot of that information is then integrated in proper ways into actionable insights, I think as a researcher, that's what I would like to see versus just adding a lot more responsibility on research institutions and groups and not seeing things. Yeah, please.

Yeah, just a very simple example.

Quick response, I agree 100%. I was at a Substar event, side event, a couple of years ago and listening to a whole range of different data platforms. And they are all apparently going to be talking to each other. But then I was left thinking, you've got these data platforms, but who is actually going to be able to operate them? So I think there's a little bit of competition, talking amongst friends here, between UN agencies in having some of these data platforms. So, I think we need to, I 100% agree with that point. So, it's not just an academic issue, it's who's managing these data platforms and what are the purposes. So, yeah, a big challenge.

I know we have a few more questions, but I wanted to give the floor to Sandra Perdomo from the Humboldt Institute who was supposed to join us initially but had an emergency. So, maybe a few thoughts on the discussion, Sandra.

Thank you. From Humboldt Institute, we had experience for this to the last or the former two years, and we have great, viable experiences. We create trust, we create an environment of collective support action. for support countries for achieving their targets. We have gained valuable experience in making, with other sub-regional centers, something that I call as a broker knowledge, basically, because we are trying to connect countries' needs with the expertise from the region, but also a global expert that can help and can support countries. So we have had a lot of challenges, but also we have experienced our capacity to connect, our capacity to have a strategic vision of as a regional vision, because we have identified barriers, but also opportunities for not only for countries, it's more for about regional perspectives. So in that sense, I think we understand our capacities. Also, we are identify the potential of our regions in terms of Latin America and the Caribbean, that is the most biodiverse region in the world. We are facing how we can connect all these needs, all these challenges, but also these opportunities, because any action in this region impact the global goals. So basically, we are consolidating a database of centers that can support parties, we really appreciate the idea that it's important to create only a non-partisan group of experts to support the countries, basically. So we are trying to involve more and more organizations, more and more people. who raise their hand and say how can support parties. We know universities, all the academy, NGOs, they really want to be involved, to be part of these plans. So basically, our challenge is how we can create a governance more than only the parties. Yes, and of course we have a big challenge in gather financial resources, but I don't want to talk about that because all of us know that this is the main challenge. But also how we can connect capacities, technical support, and basically we have had, in the case of Humboldt Institute, we have had three in-person workshops, five virtual workshops. connect more than 700 people in this workshop. In the last two years, we could do a lot of things without any financial support or expected support. So I don't want to talk about the financial issues, but more about the articulation, the coordination, and how we can build more values about this new idea, innovative idea to have subregional centers. And I think we have had a lot of opportunities ahead.

Thank you, Sandra. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Apparently, an hour and a half is not enough to solve these issues. But you can still add your suggestions to the Menti. I see one which I really like, coordinate interregional public knowledge sharing sessions on team days. to demonstrate the service of TSSC and co-author with them papers and with stakeholders. So I think that's a very nice, innovative idea. Anyone from the panel wants to say a few concluding words in 30 seconds? Yeah. Yeah. Great.

No, I appreciate the comment from the gentleman, the colleague from Finland, when he was referencing the SDGs ambitions and the research allocations that accompany that. And as someone who lead the negotiations for South Africa in the capacity building, together with that gentleman on the other side, I was just thinking, what do you see in the capacity building that item, what is it saying about research and innovation? Probably I read about it, but now I'm more interested to know what are we saying about research and innovation. That's my to-do list next after this meeting. I want to check that. Thank you so much.

Also very quickly, I'm just reacting to the last point here on the Menti regarding the breaking down of the silos, bringing researchers and policymakers together at all levels. I think this is, to be honest, keen. I'm sorry, I'm adding additional responsibility on the researchers. And to be honest, personally, whenever attending at COPS or any kind of this national or high level meetings, I talk within the village where I'm living in Italy with the local authorities. We have meetings talking about environmental issues, bringing my own, I'm a biologist, experience, talking about the challenges we have so that they can understand the processes, the challenges that we have ahead. So I think it's our responsibility to engage at all levels, and most of our societies have structures that allow you to attract actually at the smallest level, at the local level, And I think it's only when we will have developed this continuity and this texture of science policy interface from the village to the cups, really, which is the global dimension. This is where we probably would be most effective. But I'm afraid it's the responsibility of the researchers to engage with the people around so that we can help, basically, the community understand the real challenges we have ahead. And my experience that most people have no idea about the scale of the challenges we have. Thank you so much again for organizing this session.

And thank you all for sharing your ideas with us and being here with us. And maybe a round of applause to our panel speakers today. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

All right, everybody. So because we want to be able to finish on time, we're going to start ahead. So thank you, everybody, for joining this session. on nature positive recovery, building resilience for disasters and conflict. We have a number of panelists and presenters, but I'll start off with a very quick sort of introduction on the ideas and the concepts behind this session. Okay, so We actually are developing this session as part of a project on resilient and urban nature-based infrastructure, and we are funded under the Driving Urban Transitions framework with a consortium based in Japan, Poland, and Sweden. And the funders are listed here as well. And the context is that there's major disasters and emergency situations that we can identify and map around the world. There are some indications that these are increasing, and these are happening at various different scales, but also in a number of different areas. If we zoom into more specifics on conflicts, we can see a number of conflicts worldwide. Some of them are emerging, some of them are at a very high risk, and others are sort of in a declining stage. Now, we can also identify Climate related occurrences, here we see floods, the number of floods by regions between the years 2000 and 2022. And we can see certain trends depending on the region where these are taking place. Now, the EMDAT database specifically says that we shouldn't look at the trend line of the numbers of increases because there's improvements in reporting standards and reporting happening. Nonetheless, we can see major increases in terms of the economic losses that are associated with this, and I think especially if we're talking with decision makers, the numbers often do ring some bells. Now, against that backdrop, of course, we have climate change, we have extreme weather events, and conflicts, and we are seeing that there's increased disaster frequency associated with these. And of course, there's also a lot of interconnections between these backdrops. Now, the situation for cities, majority of the population lives in cities, and cities face infrastructure loss, in certain cases, ecological degradation, but also social fragmentation. And conventional build back methods are clearly insufficient, and there's a need for nature-based recovery. Not just for the biodiversity aspects of it, but also for improving and restoring social cohesion and so forth. Now, the conceptual approach behind this is that there's actually already a lot of experiences on disaster recovery processes, especially in Asia. Part of our consortium is based in Japan, so there's a lot of experience also on infrastructure redevelopment and community building. So we can identify lessons that we can learn from good cases in terms of long-term recovery processes related to community cohesion, social capital, but also land use and relocation planning, integration of nature-based solutions, inclusion of vulnerable population groups, and also, of course, the long-term policy and governance and adaptability. Now, within our project, we are especially focusing on challenges that are identified in Ukraine. We have a number of partners there, and there are several expected issues in recovery processes. This includes rebuilding social cohesion, restoring land, ecosystems, and also spatial justice. designing multifunctional peace-supporting infrastructure, ensuring inclusion of vulnerable and marginalized groups, and establishing adaptive and decentralized governance. Now, we are facilitating knowledge exchange and experience exchange, and within that, having a very strong focus on nature-based solutions to help accelerate recovery processes. But we're also seeing as even though there are still ongoing conflict situations, people are already taking measures in their own hands and already working with nature to support livelihoods and so forth. Now, our overall objectives is to investigate existing functions of green infrastructure in preparedness and recovery. We're studying the role very specifically on civic ecological practices in recovery, and one of the speakers will introduce that more. Looking at response diversity as a way to support green infrastructure solutions, enhancing the understanding of green infrastructure design along urban rural gradients, and developing a number of strategies for integrating green infrastructure into long-term recovery policies. Now, what is response diversity? It's basically a variety of strategies, traits, behaviors, and approaches to respond to environmental change and disturbances, enabling persistence of essential functions. It avoids a synchronized failure. Those who have an ecology background are probably very much familiar with this. So a high response diversity is achieved by nurturing multiple strategies and components that respond differently to a disturbance, increasing the likelihood that some continue to function well while others fail. Now, this is pretty straightforward, but just to illustrate how this means conceptually, so on the top base here, from Walker et al., we have seven responses illustrated with the colors of the dots. versus two different responses to a certain disturbance, where the seven different responses may enable continuation of maintaining of a function, while if you have high reliance on one particular response, then there's a likelihood of a loss in function. Now, you can also illustrate this in different scales, but the point is that we wanna avoid a synchronized failure. Now, to illustrate it on different scales, so on the top left, we have high local and high global response diversity. So the local communities developing their own processes to avoid synchronized losses, together with a global diverse response to disturbances. Now, completely on the right side, we have a low local and low global response diversity. And this again illustrates a higher risk for a synchronized abrupt change at all these scales. So we wanna include more diversity, not only within the realm of nature-based solutions, but also the other strategies that come together in recovery processes. Now, some of the aimed impacts are actionable recovery frameworks for cities and governments. Empowerment of communities through civic ecology and inclusive decision making. Of course, the knowledge sharing of good practices, opportunities for green investments and circular economy models for the private sector especially, and overall a contribution to global peace and resilience by linking ecological restoration with social cohesion. Now, i do wanna share that when we are in conflict situations, There's often very little data available. There's often no data being collected in terms of biodiversity loss, but also how people are engaging with the natural environment and how it's supporting their livelihoods or response diversity. Now, we had a question for the audience. However, because of technical issues, I have to refrain from bringing this forward here, but before we are able to go through the panel, we are gonna invite my colleague Maureen to talk a little bit more about her work following maybe the movie screening first. Okay.

It was a film, it was one of our attempts to convert scientific studies into the stories and use films to tell the stories to the general public because Yeah, this is a way how we try to communicate what we have studied. And now I want to just show you the research process behind this film, and it's about response diversity in wartime, and I will focus on civic college practices. You see two different photos. One is up, it's how eastern part of Ukraine looks like now due to this Russian aggression. In the lower picture, you see that people try to restore. Someone tried to destroy the environment, people join their efforts to restore environment. And this picture is taken in Dnipro, city which is like 60 kilometers from the combat zone. War has tremendous effect on the impact on biodiversity, and I don't think we address properly the war, armed conflict as a driver for biodiversity loss. And this is just, I summarize right now what is going on in Ukraine and the effect of the war on biodiversity in Ukraine. And you see there are multiple impacts, but also they are interconnected. And it's about habitat destruction, it's about pollution, and so on. But it also affects institutions. that are responsible for environmental monitoring for different conservation programs, because areas become inaccessible, many areas become inaccessible due to the danger of different unexplored ordnance, or it's occupied, people are mobilized, and so on, which means war destroyed not only nature environment, but it also destroyed institutions. And of course, there is a lot of human Damages now estimated, World Health Organization estimated that millions of Ukrainians would need assistance to recover both physically and mentally. And this is where civic ecology practices come. Why we focus on civic ecology practices? Because we are trying to understand the effect of those community-led initiatives. that focus on nature restoration or restoration of nature environment, but also restoration of relations between people and their environment. And the main question is why this civic ecology practices should be considered when we talk about biodiversity recovery or biodiversity conservation or biodiversity restoration, and also how these practices, if they contribute to biodiversity conservation, how these practices could be supported. This is a map of Ukraine. The red color shows temporarily occupied area, and this is the location of our case studies. We studied different initiatives, and this is some kind of summary what we have studied. We recommended to interview people that work in 20 different initiatives across Ukraine. We did interviews with participants and also organizers, and also we organized workshop with those who we interviewed to understand how we could scale up such practices across Ukraine during the prolonged war. And you see these initiatives located in different distances from the combat zone, from 70, 60 kilometers to 900 kilometers. We use practice theory to understand resources, competences, and meanings that people attach to their activities, to their involvement in such initiatives, to understand the civic ecology practices as a phenomenon, what is needed, how they operate, and what kind of interaction among resources, competences, and meaning. And so far I could say that we, because the studies, the work is going on in Ukraine, and so far we identify four different responses for different ways of getting started to improve environment, but also to restore relations with their nature environment. We studied community, urban community gardens, victory gardens, public parks that activities related to restoration of public parks, but also school-based initiatives. And you see that they started by different actors, by citizens or local communities, and also by public bodies. For example, Victory Gardens, you saw also in the film that it was initiated by the government to provide the food security at local level, and also school-based initiative also belong to the public sector. They started from different activities, from cleaning space, for creating some compost, to plant different vegetables and so on. And they also exposed to different challenges, for example, like insecurity, tenure, or some kind of informal access to the land, labor loss due to mobilization, and so on. What we discovered, which was very important, that these civic ecology practices provide multiple benefits to people during this prolonged war in Ukraine. And we identified six group of benefits. And the most important that these benefits come simultaneously when people are engaged in activities, and they could get benefits related to health and well-being, to social cohesion, civil participation. knowledge and skills sharing, and so on. And benefits are important because it's related to safe, they provide therapeutic space for people to restore mentally and physically, especially for kids. It also serves as a space for social integration, especially internally displaced people with communities where they arrive. And also it's about food security, but also related to biodiversity conservation, maybe restoration, maybe it's about environmental impact, but also knowledge. Yeah, also knowledge and skills that people gain through the involvement in such initiatives.

Can we ask to keep the microphone a little closer, please?

Like to use to show you the importance of such initiatives for physical and mental health when people say that They really like gardening, and it's important for them to touch soil, soils, and to feel nature. And this is, it helps them to restore and bring happiness even during this dark time in Ukraine. And then we analyze all these competencies, resources, and means that people attach to these initiatives. And you see there are multiple competencies which people need. to sustain such activities and also multiple meanings, and many resources are needed to, again, to operationalize or to sustain initiatives. And what is interesting that there is some competencies, meaning, and resources are shared across all initiatives. They're similar for different initiatives. And from that side, it shows that, I mean, from one side, they are more sustainable because They need more resources than they share resources, but at the same time, if they merge, if they occur geographic, because we studied initiatives that geographically spread, but if they are concentrated in one place, there could be some competition for resources, for competences, especially during this time. Therefore, there is a need to engage different sectors and provide continuous learning and experience exchange in order to maintain competences, but also resources. Then we also try to understand what is needed to maintain such initiatives during the war time, and we Okay, I will do first. And we identify three different loops which are based around the people, because leaders mobilize people, they form devoted team, and team take leadership, but also institutions, they need, institutions are important because they get access to the land, and also they help to bring partners and also funding. But these three reinforcing loop also serves as a, they also could spread failure, because right now people depend, might burn, and it's going on now in Ukraine. It's a very tough situation, and some leaders are not able to continue for a long time. Municipal staff could change because it's very huge dynamics of the municipal staff at different levels, and funding could expand. Therefore, from one side, they are diverse in form, but also But also some kind of, there is some challenges if they would, again, it would be competition for different resources or competent people. And finally, I would like to say that why it's needed within this national biodiversity strategies and action plans. I think it's important to recognize the civic ecology practices as informal stewardship, as a governance mode. And if that would be supported, then they could get really small support. They don't need much. It's really low budget activities. But if through the recognition, they might get support, it's also important to include not only tangible indicators into a monitoring program, but also their capacities of different communities to maintain their nature environment, to have skills to involve people into biodiversity conservation actions, especially in war-affected communities. And in participation, we have to understand the situation in war-affected areas, that it could be many challenges related to displacement, scarcity of resources, and so on. Yeah. Therefore, to finalize, I could say that communities are the victims of the war, but they also agent of recovery, in particular biodiversity recovery. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Maureen, for the really important discussions and clear insights from the situation in Ukraine and also the findings from these studies. From there, we will go into a dialogue session with a number of panelists. So we will go in order of the panelists mentioned here. brief reminder, we want to keep time short, so I've requested each panelist to prepare up to two slides with roughly three minutes each, so that we can have ample time to also have discussions with all of you in the audience. So as we are moving forward, but also based on the previous presentations, Feel free to think about relevant questions. So I would like to pass the microphone to Dr. Hovik from GIS Armenia.

Yes, thank you. Let me share with you the experience from ongoing project, Tashir Climate. bridge project. Tashir is a small river and city in the northern part of Armenia, which highly damaged after tremendous flood two years ago in May. So our project, ongoing project, is about how to recovery the natural disaster in a way that it will bring new opportunity. So try to shift from disaster to opportunity for the community. And the first thing that came to our mind was shift the thinking of local community members, because they carry the fear from the flood and from the damage that they got. So the first thing was to work with community and provide opportunity for them, and for that, we used a science-based approach and not simply restore or or renovate the damaged bridge on the river bank via nature-based solution, but also provide them opportunity, provide community stewardship to this riparian ecosystem and their eventual participation and communication with their surroundings. So our first message from from this experiment, from this project, is that disaster in many cases could become an opportunity for the community. And the first step in that direction is science-based evidence. And our initial works demonstrated that there are several high-value biodiversity spots riparian, swampy areas, wetlands that could be integrated into community development plan. And you see some figures, 111 species of plants, different birds, fishes, red listed species, and all these are within the framework of city. So our work in the city and communication with local community, rebuild their wish to shift their mind after the work that we actually carried out and explaining that the local action that we are doing, restoring the bridge, restoring the river bank of the nature-based solutions, also is a very big contribution to Biodiversity Framework, and namely Target 2, ecosystem restoration, because we are working on restoring of river banks, wetlands, riverine and riparian zone. Target 12, We are repairing and enlarging, expanding green corridors within the city, but also integrating blue infrastructure in the city. And then it's evident contribution to target 11, that is combining ecological restoration with flood resilience and the local benefits. And also it is a very clear contribution to biodiversity involvement in community planning process, which at the moment is on ground. And also in all these processes, We have this inclusive participation from community. I would like to complete my presentation with three main outcomes or key takeaways. The first one is from the fear to move community stewardship. Second, from the infrastructure shift to ecosystem. from tree, from small local action, think globally and meet global targets. Thank you.

Thank you so much, and especially for the valuable insights as Armenia is hosting us today, over the next several days also. and we can identify, of course, recurring issues of conventional infrastructure development hampering with biodiversity goals. So thank you so much for those insights. Next, I would like to invite Director Satenik from the Achen College of Science and Engineering, American University of Armenia.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to share an interesting project and case study that we are currently

in Armenia, and it's very, very much related to what Marine was describing in the war zone in Ukraine. The problem that we are trying to target here is that even though Armenia has very nice nature, mountains, and rich of wildlife and biodiversity, etc. But when it comes to the sustainability of the rural areas, and we all know that even though we are talking about urban problems here, but urban places are very much related and dependent on the rural sustainability, we have very interesting problems. First one is because of our geographical set up in the country, our lands are fragmented, and because of the climate also, we don't have very many chances of multiple harvesting intensive farming in rural areas. We don't have scalable big farms in rural areas. And this is not only today, but historically, Armenians, even in Soviet era, The urbanization level in Armenia was very high, 60%. And right now we are facing even more challenges because of the technological advancement, et cetera. Young generation is connecting their future to the urban areas, and we have very big challenges for sustaining the rural parts of the country and balanced development of the country. But in the same time, we also have another challenge. Food and also animal feed are dependent on import a lot, and food supply chain sustainability is a problem for us also. But we have very interesting, our scientists found out, and the technology allowed us to find that in our mountains, in the wildlife, we have species in the grass, wild grass that is very protein heavy, and a few regions that we have are very rich with this wild plants. Especially alfalfa and also clover, which is very expensive in the world, and this is a very critical part of the protein gap that the entire world is facing. So we are trying to use these challenges and also the opportunities that nature gives us. And based on the educational process and research process, the triangle of policymakers, the scientists, and the local and private sector, the economy, and also the end users, in this case, it is the small farms in the regions, and also the students in all levels of educational system, the schools, the universities, together, they have to use the natural resources, of course, responsible way, and use the technology to make sure that they are solving two problems, local problems, the food sustainability problem, and also the global challenge, which is protein gap. If you go to the next step, I want to demonstrate one case study or a project. This is the, we call it Hund AgriHub, and all these players are part of this food agri hub. Our local scientists and engineers developed this bio feed meal. which allows the local farms in the regions, rural areas, to use the wild grass or which is collected with the robots and also use the fermentation food waste and create protein heavy feed for the domestic animals. And within our experimental 101 day, we found out that this is adding or increasing the protein level in the dairy products, in case of the chickens, the egg, and also the meat, etc. So this allows us first to preserve the the tradition for biodiversity use in our regions, connect the economic players, the local farms, give them a way to sustainable economy, engage students so that even if they are interested in moving to technological aspects of the areas of the country, they still understand and inherit the tradition of biodiversity and they have exposure to the problems and issues that biodiversity diversity has currently. And also, we are engaging the policy level players into the play so that this becomes a framework, not a single small experiment. Thank you.

So much. It's very encouraging to hear this is happening in educational settings and supporting young researchers going forward. Next, I would like to invite Dr. Sunita from the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, ISIMOD in Nepal.

Thank you, Gils. Hello, everyone. I'm Sunita from Nepal and work for ISIMOD. So if I, yes. So, I'm just trying to reflect, you know, Nepal recently had a very bad flood, which took many lives, which swept away many infrastructure along the way from high mountains and from glacier up to the fourth plains. And also, like, still thousands of them are missing, but we do not have hope to find them. But today, I'll not discuss about the recovery of that massive disaster, which was just beyond our imagination, because we are still in the response phase. We are responding to different needs for the people there. And I think recovery phase will still start after a few months, once we will be able to cater all the response needs of the local communities. But I would like to really focus on the story of the Himalaya degradation in Nepal. If you remember, like, you know, in 1980s, so the Nepal, if you just imagine sitting on the top of the hills, you could see The hills with the red soils scars with a lot of landslides, no forest at all. So all over Nepal, there was barely around 20% of the forest across Nepal. And we had severe degradation across the heavy sedimentation and siltation erosion going to the Bay of Bengal. But now, during 1990s, government gave some of the lands to the community so that they can protect the forest, they can depend on the forest. And after 20 years, if you see now, community forestry in Nepal has become one of the pioneering example all over the world. People are conserving forest, people are dependent on forest for their livelihoods and everything. But the story doesn't end here. The story is like, Even we have now 45% of the land cover under forest, still people have so many conflicts and have so many barriers to access water. And if you see, especially women and girls queue for water, just for the bucket of water for hours, and they need to, still now today in this world, they still have to work for around two, three hours just to get the bucket of water. So seeing this, you know, we started reviving and restoration of springs. Springs, if you know, small falls around all over the Nepal, and we do not have access to the tap water in each of the household. People have to collect the water from the springs, from the rivers, everywhere for their drinking purpose and also for the livelihoods purpose. So that's why we started this reviving and restoration of springs all over the Meeld Hills, because millions of the people are still dependent on these springs for their daily needs. And then what we did is, it's not about giving everything to them. We invited the community, especially the marginalized community. We trained them as a resource person to map the springs of the whole area. And then they formed the community. They mapped the springs through the citizen sites. We developed the app. to the community, and they started to map the screens of the whole landscape. And now they have already, if you see from this small case study, the pilot study, they have mapped around like 100% of the springs throughout the whole landscape. And out of that, they figure out that some springs are really declining fast. And those declining and degraded springs, they have started to plant species, you know, the local species, the native species, and they have started to restored the water, and now each of the household has direct access to the water, and because of their water, they have started the community gardens, they have started the agriculture land, you know, and this restoration has not only provided the livelihoods, but they have also given the hope of the life for the whole community, and that has been scaled out in many of the mid hills of Nepal. So what I want to reflect here is what are the key enablers. So here we see, I think it was also reflected in our previous speakers, like, you know, the trust between the local communities and government is really key to implement anything on the ground. And really that social capital, which is very strong in the communities, like among the Nepal or India in that Hindu Koshi Himalayan region, the social capital is really high and that really plays an important role in terms of success of any types of the recovery in the restoration of springs. So what I want to say within this three-minute slot is like the ownership, the equity in terms of the minimal participation, especially the poor and marginalized communities since the beginning, and trying to make that access and benefit in an equitable way really is one of the success for the recovery phase. So whenever we try to do any recovery, I think we need to put this agenda at the heart of any recovery phase, especially when we connect ecosystem on our people. So with this one, I would like to thank you. And this project has been very successful in terms of agriculture and also access to the waters across the dry landscape in Nepal.

Thank you so much for also very valuable inputs, again, showing the connection between people's engagement and the natural environment. And next, I would like to invite Marco Pütz from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research to fill in your three minutes slots. Thank you.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me here on the panel. I would like to contribute with a short note on governance arrangements and conceptual issues around risk and prevention. And I would like to talk about the case of Blatten. The case of Blatten has been a major incident last year in Switzerland, basically 20 million tons of rock and ice, which buried the village of Blatten and nearby settlements. And that is an interesting story because despite all the economic loss of over 300 million Swiss francs and the heritage loss of 370 buildings destroyed, even really old buildings, from the 16th and 17th century, this has been a rather mild outcome in that respect that only one very unfortunate fatality has to be noted here. And I would like to talk about why this was possible. And this was possible basically because it was able to evacuate the population of the village and nearby settlements, including the cattle. because it's a very agricultural place here, before the event. And that was possible because in Switzerland, the idea is to live with risks, I would say, but to try to avoid disasters. And the sort of governance arrangements behind natural hazard management are a multi-level governance scheme, including different elements I would like to walk you through now very briefly. One is at the national level that we have a national platform for natural hazards, which is an extra parliamentary commission with people from public administration, from industries, and science, which is responsible to develop a national strategy for Switzerland dealing with risks from natural hazards. This is also the the place where we talk about and develop the Swiss system of integral risk management, and this is also the place which facilitates early risk dialogue. And risk dialogue is an important feature of this system because it is asking really fundamental questions like: What can happen? What is allowed to happen? And what needs to be done? And these sort of guiding questions need to need to focus the discussion about acceptable risks, for example, or target safety levels, including which are the assets to protect and which is critical infrastructure to maintain. But this is only the national part of it. The cantons are heavily involved as well, as they are responsible for the operative natural hazard management. They are the ones who go out with the heavy machineries and build dams and things. And the cantons are also responsible to organize building insurances for the villages. And then the third part is maybe the most important because that's the local level and that's the local natural hazard observers we have in Switzerland. So this is really lay people like mountaineering guides, foresters who make the observations. And that was actually the crucial part also in the Blatten incident. because it was one of those guys who noticed that the mountains are moving and really triggered the whole process behind it. And this is, i guess, the probably most important message, that despite all the funding and infrastructure available in countries like Switzerland, it's still people who make the difference because they make the observations and they take the decisions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. That was very insightful, and especially the governance aspects, but also the human involvement in responding to hazards and potential disasters, and also accepting the situation of having to live with certain risks in our environments. So next, I would like to invite Ms. Nerit Katz as the Chief Sustainability Officer of UCLA and VP Board of Water and Power Commissioners. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much. This has been a really fascinating discussion. So I'm going to speak to a couple examples from Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County. I'll do a little timer for myself to make sure I keep it short. So the first is we're dealing with a lot of issues around water in our area. So Los Angeles is a large municipality, city of 4 million people. The county of Los Angeles is 10 million people. In the state of California, which is quite large, most of the water is in the north and most of the people are in the south. So our county and our city depend on a lot of external sources of water. We're facing severe drought consequences. We're also facing impacts from the sort of climate extremes. So we go drought, and then we get all the water at once, and that can cause a lot of flooding. So we have a lot of nature-based solutions around stormwater management. and kind of flood management, restoration efforts along the Los Angeles River. Within the city, the city of LA has a program for green alleyways, where these are alleys behind homes that traditionally were flooding, but we're doing nature-based, you know, bioswells and those kind of efforts. The county of Los Angeles also has a coastal initiative. called living shorelines that is rebuilding the beaches in a way that is nature-based. So essentially, dune restoration, this is an example from one of the beaches. So there's funding for three beaches to start with, but this is helping to deal with the coastal erosion and strengthen the shoreline for a later time. Then the other major kind of climate risk we're facing besides heat and drought is fire. So the city of Los Angeles experienced devastating fires, as did another area in the county, in 2025. So thousands of homes were destroyed. The fires started in the wildland but became these urban firestorms. And so there's a number of ways in the recovery that we are trying to incorporate nature-based recovery. One is in mountain areas, which is often where the ignition can take place. And I should mention that most of the fires in Southern California are human-caused, so these are not lightning and storms. But the National Park Service in this area is planting fire resilient native plants that are less likely to ignite, and so trying to deal with all of the flammable invasives. So that's a form of restoration that is also wildfire mitigation and part of the recovery. We also had the County of Los Angeles created a Blue Ribbon Commission of experts to look at how to do the recovery. And one of the solutions there was to have greenbelts. A lot of our fires are wind and ember driven, so oak trees can help to block those fires and catch some of the embers. And then lastly, because of these urban fires in dense urban areas, we had a lot of contamination, heavy metals in the soils, and there's a number of different nonprofit organizations that are working with that are working with soil remediation efforts that are very nature-based efforts. We have very little time today, but I will say across all of these, there's a A lot of community engagement, planning for the recovery of these communities that have completely burnt down. There's a number of groups that are leading the stakeholder engagement. There's a group, Resilient Palisades, that is working to make sure that that part of the city is rebuilt in consideration of a more sustainable, greener, and more nature-based approach.

It's really impressive to see the action that's being taken both for responding to heavy rainfall, floods, and also wildfire that's occurring. So next, I'd like to invite Dr. Ken Fukushi from the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo.

Thank you, giles, and everybody. already shown by their first concept note that their Asian experience transferred to their recovery process in the affected area by war and conflict. I just... This is recently published in the, not my paper, in the Nature Urban Sustainability, comparing the recovery process result in Christchurch and Fukushima, both is affected by the earthquake 2011, one is in January, one is March. And Christchurch initially dropped the population, however, continuous improvement of the population. On the other hand, Fukushima, I mean, their recovery process is not really physically going on. However, population is not really getting back to the original status. This is actually double effect. One is one problem, the radioactive material still sitting in Fukushima. However, this is if you see this paper, you can see the major difference is their national situation of the country. As you know, Japan is facing one of the rapid depopulation and rapid demographic change. Economic recession has been, then, last few years is okay, but we have been under depression of economy for last 20 to 30 years. On the other hand, New Zealand encourage immigration and positively getting our manpower from outside the country. And this is sort of the very cartoon. Help in damaged area, I mean disaster or conflict, is very important. We have to, not only national, but over internationally, we have to help each other. However, Our country itself has to be healthy. From the viewpoint of population, from the viewpoint of demography, we have, I'm age of 61, you know? I mean, I'm one of the young population in working people. Our economy has to be good, and security has to be also good. This is national security or social security as well, and peace. last COP, last CBD conference and party in Colombia, the main focus in peace and nature. And without having a peace, the nature, people cannot, I mean, work together, cannot trust each other. So this healthy situation of the country is one of the vital issue in order to accelerate the recovery process and damage earlier. Very simple messages, but my talk is here. Thank you.

Thank you so much for another valuable input from especially the case in Japan. So next, we would like to open a dialogue with the audience. We have a few guiding questions, but maybe before we go into that, I would like to check if there's clarification questions or questions you want to specifically ask. to specific panelists, please raise your hand. Yeah, please go ahead, Alan.

My question is directed at Marco. The Swiss example, of course, is very impressive, but to what extent in the disaster response is there a eco-restoration, ecological restoration, and building resilience through eco-restoration or ecological management part of the Swiss thinking? Or is it more, you know, there's the rescue operations, there's the identification of risk response?

Thanks, Alan. Important question. Two answers, two short answers. So one answer is that I would say there's a strong component to think about resilience and really think about how to build back better. And that often means that building back better means to build differently than before, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of maybe the location now of the buildings which have to be rebuilt in a case like Blatten. So that implies changes. The second answer about nature-based solutions, here this example has been, of course, in a rural setting where nature-based solutions are pretty obvious. So it is more in urban context, i would say, that nature-based solutions are considered. And that if we have measures for flood management, for example, that usually implies to take into consideration climate change, recreation, and try to do this as well. It is part of the spatial planning, landscape planning routines and should be considered. Implementation is, of course, a bit depending on each case, but yeah, it is considered.

Yeah, go ahead, Rini.

I think, i'm not sure, I think I also addressed my question to Marco. because he mentioned cantonal insurance at the canton level. So my general question, and I'd like to hear some reactions, in terms of climate justice and risk insurance, it's very wide-ranging whether it is Agricultural insurance, fire insurance, I am told that in many parts of the US, with the high fire incidents, it's quite difficult even to get your house insured against fire. So how are we thinking about, I mean, yes, we are talking about remedial measures, but for individuals, How does insurance and justice play out?

Yeah, I can speak a little bit. This is a huge issue for California. We're really struggling in this area, and people are having a lot of difficulty with insurance. So I don't have all the solutions, but I will say that it is a major concern and a major issue, and people are still struggling to get their funding post-disaster, and the future is looking really challenging for insurance because the system wasn't built to deal with this scale of climate impacts, for sure.

Yeah, thanks for the question, really important question and really interesting in the case of Glatt because not every canton has an insurance in place. And one of the cantons who has not the building insurance in place is the canton of Valais where this happened. So now there's the issue that someone has to pay for it. And it's not the canton, it's not the private owners, it's the federal level jumping in. And in terms of justice, you mean like affordability of insurances for people. And yeah, these insurance are usually obligatory, mandatory insurances also for farmers with cattle and in another context. But the question is now starting to emerge also in Switzerland, because it is really the question whether people are being able to really buy these insurances in the future due to climate change. So even in countries like experts, let me talk about this justice issue now.

If I can just quickly follow up, because this question relates to Nepal. What about when you have trans-boundary disasters, as in the case of Nepal, where different countries Well, let's not ascribe blame to any one country at this point, but how does this play out when you've got massive transboundary issues?

I don't know the answer, but I know that it is debated at climate cops, for example.

Maybe I'll jump in on that very briefly as well, because it opens up a larger conversations about transformations in general. Insurance focuses on the financial schemes behind enabling quicker recovery after a disaster, but it doesn't change how the system operates. It doesn't change society. And so we're actually, as part of this project, also looking at how to bring in new loops where those people that are engaged in stewardship of nature and are supporting recovery processes, how they can provide a true value of nature, which is more ecosystem-based insurance rather than financial insurance. which would be part of the mix of the disaster response and the diversity of responses that can be provided for affected communities. I'll let Sunita.

Yeah, thank you. Very good question. And I think we have been trying our best to deal with the transboundary cooperation between China, India, and Nepal, especially the big rivers like this one, because the one that the flood that hit is one of the biggest rivers in Nepal, originating from Tibet Autonomous Region of China, flowing down to Nepal, going to India. So we have several transboundary river basin projects where we try our best to bring China, India, and Nepal together and try to coordinate through early warning system. But this kind of disaster was beyond our imagination. And that's why I think government of Nepal in UNGA also strongly put forward the argument about the climate justice. Like the country like Nepal has contributed nothing to the global greenhouse emission at the global scale. But the disaster we have seen soon after that disaster, we had another big disaster in another big river in that region. So we have been trying our best to make the argument about the climate justice, but that is more kind of like a bit political at the higher level. What really matters is on the ground, right? So India and China really, and all over, I think the countries from all over the world really came together to support Nepal to respond to the disaster on the ground, right? And then I think ECMO is really focusing on transboundary cooperation, and we have a lot of support from also government of Switzerland, especially on early warning system at the transboundary level. So at the transboundary level, at the national level, and then at the local level is more like we have LAPA, the local adaptation plan, especially for the disasters like this. But I think there is no clear cut answer that we are also trying to find. figure out how we can really respond in an effective way so that community can build the resilience to such disasters. So no clear-cut answer for now, but yeah, we are in that phase to go through this. Thank you for that question.

Thank you so much. So the gentleman in the back.

Thank you very much. My name's Steven Van from the Society of Conservation Biology and Oulu University in Finland. I'd like to say something at a fairly general level first, that like in 1992, when the first CBD came in, we were living in quite a safe world and had quite good levels of biodiversity. 30 years on, we're seeing many disasters, as some of the ones that have been presented here. But what I see is that we've not learned the basic lesson, that most of these are very local, serious disasters, which we're addressing at a local level. What we really need is to increase resilience in countries where there's no idea that we might be experiencing disasters, or ones maybe like in Switzerland, in other parts of Switzerland, where similar disaster may happen. What I could see is that Marine's presentation suggested that at a national level, this is actually enhancing resilience in Ukraine. In California, that's also preemptive, so doing work not against disasters that have already happened, but to reduce the possibility of those disasters. But my question is, How can we do more to increase resilience by conserving biodiversity and improving the environment on a larger scale, rather than just in response to a disaster that's happened?

Yeah, I think there's been some other related sessions. I was part of a different session on that topic earlier in the COP. This session in particular, we wanted to talk about the recovery phase, but there was a whole session. I think it was sponsored by ICLEI. I can try to find you the information that was really focused on climate resilience. How do we prepare for those future disasters? What are we doing across the board? So I think there is a lot of work happening in that space. I'm missing it because I'm here, but California is hosting a big climate resilience summit right now in Sacramento that's exactly on this topic and everything we can do from wetlands to restoring fire, et cetera, home hardening, all these different pieces that help us get ready. In our city, extreme heat is a major climate risk, and I know Europe's been dealing with a lot of that lately also. So preparing for how we maintain and develop and increase our urban forest, for example, is a big piece of how we can cool our cities. So there is a lot of, I think, conversation happening on that. But one of the things it points to is the need for integration across the conventions, and I believe there's a couple sessions at COP hosted by IUCN about how do we bring together the climate COP, the biodiversity COP, and the food and desertification, because these risks, these issues are all linked and they really need to be dealt with in an integrated way.

And I also would like to add why we use concept of response diversity, because we really want to understand how to organize this preparedness to different disasters, but also particular to armed conflicts. And this is why response diversity is a very useful concept, because we're trying to understand what is needed to maintain at the local level, national level, even globally, to develop this global preparedness or national preparedness or local preparedness to different disasters, which is not only about nature-based but also about the people, how to organize people, what skills are needed, what competences are important, what resources should be allocated. For example, now we want to start, and this really has to be across different sectors. We have to understand the responses from different sectors at national level, public, private, civil sectors, because it should be integrated efforts if something happens. And also, we have to also consider the global level. For example, there are global stakeholders like FSC, WWF, FAO, organizations that deal with these issues and their local stakeholders because they do stuff on local level, but they are driven by global agenda. And now we are trying, we will start a dialogue at the global level through IUFRO. to understand what instruments, knowledge different organizations have that could be mobilized if something happened, which means we have to consider this, we have to approach this global preparedness also, and also preparedness at different levels. Yeah. Thank you.

If I may add a few words too. In our case, the case study that I was showing from the Armenian case, many countries, including your country, Finland, have this concept of comprehensive defense and security system, including the disaster preparedness, response to it, and recovery, et cetera, along with the pillars for the security and defense system. But the whole of society approach includes two very important horizontal approaches. First one is you have to have innovative solutions which handle your local problems together with the global problems. And that's why I was mentioning the protein gap. We are not solving the problem locally. And the second very important horizontal approach that is included in cooperative defense and security systems is cultural uniqueness. You cannot add innovation by copying things. You have to take care about the unique geographical landscape, your heritage, et cetera. This is very important. You are handling global problems, but you have to apply it in your context. your local community so that the end users are part of it, and you can close the loop of educate, and then inform, and then engage. So you have to apply the knowledge somewhere, and your local communities are very important chains, but you have to make sure that this decentralized approach is working correctly. Thank you.

Thank you. So we'll take two more questions. First, the lady in the back and then the gentleman in the front.

Thank you very much. And I want to thank the madam from Nepal for bringing up the fire insurance issue. I thought it was just a Western United States thing where we are dry and drought ridden often. So for the leaders, knowing this is, the fire insurance is a global issue, it seems to me like it's a social equity issue. You've got the haves and the have nots. The have nots cannot afford fire insurance, nor, and therefore, much more difficulty in keeping their own homes, where we know those who are very wealthy could likely afford the increase in fire insurance. So how is, how are the conventions addressing fire insurance as a global issue? versus just a local issue?

I'm not sure. I do know that there are some finance threads and entire kind of finance sub-events here at the COP that maybe get into that risk and insurance, and certainly at the Climate COP, i think there's some of that, but I don't know too specifically. Within the US, and I don't know if this is true internationally, but some of the focus with the private insurers is on legislation for transparency on how they're modeling risk. That's one movement that might be global as well, like insurance transparency. And then in some cases, I think there's a push to make insurance structures more public or national or maybe even international rather than just private. But I'm not sure if there are specific events at this COP on that topic. Does anyone else know?

Yeah, just an introduction of our previous study. published in 2023, actually Jill is also co-author, are in the economical ecology. We have a published one paper called insurance value of biodiversity in the anthropocene is a full resilience value. Our insurance is basically subject is only one, you know, for example, like, I mean, damage to the agro production. However, resilience is a very holistic. And according to our paper, the resilience value, it's more than individual, some of the total individual are interest value. That mean that we are proposing the so-called insurance value, I'm sorry, resilience value, which is a more holistics. But this is a very just proposing this concept, and the methodology has not yet developed. Thank you.

One more note, I did find, I remembered there being something at the climate COP. So yeah, there was a whole insurance summit that was part of the climate COP that was focused on exactly this question globally of how do you address climate resilience, harnessing the insurance industry's capacity for economic resilience and addressing some of these equity questions. So there are global conversations taking place on that, but I'm not sure fully what the outcomes are off the top of my head.

Thank you. Nikola Denisov, ZOE Environment Network in Geneva. It's perhaps more an observation than a question, but I cannot help connecting the cartoon that Professor Fukushima was showing at the end of his presentation with the question which repeatedly came up in the film which was shown by Marynnael Bakedze. Where do they get their strengths from? And I think the answer is on the cartoon. It's basically people's energy. Unless people have energy to invest into the nature-based solution, things may not happen. If they do have this energy, things will happen. So my takeaway from this, one of the takeaways, that nature-based solutions need to be also people-based solutions in order to succeed. Thank you.

And I would add to that, that actually nature-based solutions give people hope as well, as the video showed, and that we can see in many disaster stories around the world, recovery processes, even after the 2011 triple disaster in Japan, people are engaging in agriculture activities because it gave them hope to see fruits from their seeds. So with that, I'd like to close the floor and ask Dr. Fukushi to give a very brief closing summary of this session.

Thank you very much. We have a quite holistic discussion. We initially, the initiation of this project started at COP 16, happened in Colombia, Cali, And because one of the theme is that's nation peace, and we also work on for the peace. And as a Marines presentation are at that time, proposal was written 2024, October. At that time, one of the president of the one country say there he can finish war within 24 hours, which did not happen. And her presentation is showing still war is going on. And but There's activity, and people's life is there, and people's living activity. For Japanese, I thought everybody hiding in the hole and being quiet. That is not true. I mean, the regular, ordinary life is just proceeded. And this civic level activity on the biodiversity has a value and very potential to maintain resilience or improve resilience, even under the conflict period, war period. And our project is also focused on pre-war, during war, and post-war. And post-war, we have not really done it, but the Marines work is really illustrating the potential to make resilience, I mean, resilience, even improve, increase the resilience, even during the war. Hopefully, of course, the war finish as soon as possible, and then we are kind of like standing just beside to help each other. But, you know, Marine is preparing that. But on the Having said that, one of the hot donors, a Japanese donor, showing that, hey, having this thing of civic citizen activity without having a national recovery process isn't dangerous. Come on, I mean, the war is not finished yet, and Ukraine is not in that position. But certainly, Ukraine is preparing their post-war recovery process, and her activity is going to be a base in order to receive physically and mentally damaged people, especially the mentally damaged people. It's apparent we don't know. But during World War II, we also have a problem of the mentally damaged people. I mean, they're not active. It's not obvious. Cannot make family, cannot make legal life. But, i mean, we have to work each other. And this biodiversity or ecosystem, I mean, they're based, I mean, their activity, we can really are engaged. community together through this green activity, and also make some product. And that also we experienced during our Great East Japan Earthquake. And within 30 years, Tokyo and area is going to have an earthquake. Yeah, I mean, this damage cannot compare with this Great East Japan Earthquake, maybe 10 times larger. And then we have to prepare how we improve our, I mean, the level of resilience through their pre-disaster period. Insurance things, you know, I mean, there, of course, insurance sometimes make a more hazard. However, this insurance, it's insurance is there, but how we value their, how do we evaluate the value of their nature is still not really solid. Of course, the nature finance is a big issue and have been discussed actually during this COP17, one of the major issue of the nature finance, but we don't have concrete valuation methodology in order to value. And who is most important for the nature finance? Is the investor have to convince the value of nature? Of course, individual and of course institutional, I mean, there are investors. And our team tried to work together with other stakeholder, how we evaluate, you know, I mean, this nature as well. And finally, case study, actually, when we plan this, I mean, the session with IUBS in the case study is one of their most very important issue in this CBD, I mean, their COP 17, in order to show the real solution, real challenges, diversity, difference, working together. And now our session is have a lot of case study, and I hope you have some, I mean, there's things that you can bring to home and think in depth, and maybe we can collaborate each other beyond this session room. And I return microphone to the Jill. Thank you.

Thank you very much. With that, I would like to thank all the speakers, panelists today, and the audience for your participation. Thank you so much.

Just to give everyone the five minute signal, we'll be starting in about five minutes time with a fantastic line up on wildlife trade. So everyone, make sure you know where you're sitting so that we are ready. And if anyone is outside, come into the room so that you can learn about trade. Very. OK, if people can maneuver towards seats. If you think you might be asking a question at some point, you might want to join us in the middle. We'll be starting in just a minute's time. So whilst we wait to start, a brief overview. What we've tried to do today is give a more comprehensive picture of trade than you'll often get. When we talk about wildlife trade, people are often thinking about the illegal trade of wildlife. But as we all know, wildlife is used in many ways and many of those are legal. One of the major issues is our lack of data in many elements of this trade. So today, we have tried to provide an overview of different dimensions of trade, both legal and illegal. We touch upon the headline indicators, and then as a group, we'll discuss some of the major challenges that exist within this space and what we could do to more effectively manage and monitor trade. So we're going to start off with four presentations to give an overview of what trade looks like in different sectors, and then we will have six panelists who will be discussing what those challenges are and what we might be able to do better. So firstly, what do we know about wildlife trade? And what are the gaps that exist? So I will try to be brief on an absolutely vast topic. All of those of us who work on trade have been somewhat concerned by the lack of its representation. Now, it's important to note that sustainable use is one of the pillars of the Convention on Biodiversity. But this comes down to a fundamental question of what is sustainable, how do we measure it, and when do we not? So we will be covering some of those dimensions within this talk. There will be many outstanding questions, and hopefully you'll ask some of them. So unsustainable wildlife trade is one of the greatest threats to species survival. However, the dimensions of trade are often poorly represented and generally fall through the gaps in regulations. So we monitor some sectors well. We have the fisheries sector here, and they have vast amounts of data for many decades on trade. But what is trade today, and how does it differ from when the CITES text was first negotiated? Assessing what is unsustainable can be challenging due to a lack of data. Furthermore, assessing what is legal can be challenging due to a lack of data, and we'll be touching more on that later in the session. So what does trade look like? What's it worth? And where are the gaps? So let's think about what trade means to all of us. Well, it's not all illegal. If you Google trade online, you will find pictures of tigers and tigers, and an elephant, and a rhino, and then another tiger, and maybe a pangolin. But it's not all illegal. And whilst we often focus on the illegal trade, and we tend to assume that maybe legal trade is all sustainable, this is not a representation of what modern trade looks like. Legal trade is valued at over 100 billion in the EU alone, and globally, it might be more than $380 billion. Illegal trade is valued at approximately one-tenth of that. However, as I'm sure Anastasia will tell you, Illegal trade is the tip of the iceberg, because detecting trade is, of course, massively challenging, highly biased, and often reliant on short-term strategies and programs. So what is trade? Well, we'll be hearing more about it. The fisheries trade, valued at over $180 billion a year. The timber trade. That's logical. We all know about timber trade, more than 227 billion a year. You can update these figures, Kim. There is the fashion trade, valued at about $2.5 billion a year. And then there is the pet and ornamental trade, and this is an area that has traditionally fallen through the gaps of our knowledge, because unless you are a psyche species, and you probably aren't, there is vanishingly little data on this sector of trade. So what does it look like and how does our modern knowledge compare to the data? Well, if we looked at the IPBES sustainable use assessment, which is dated in 2022, it estimates that there are about 1,700 of wild terrestrial invertebrates in trade. However, an analysis that just looked at the trade of butterflies, looking at Etsy and other sources, found that there were almost 4,000 butterfly species in trade, whilst our own work found more than 1,200 species of arachnid in trade. And so the number of butterflies alone is more than double IPBES's assessment of total trade in invertebrates. And if we look at other taxa, once again, when we look at this data in detail, we find that often that IPBES assessment, which was based on the best available data, is less than half of the total number of species recorded in trade. Now, if our global assessment represents less than half the species in trade, we're probably in trouble before realizing that this doesn't include the volumes, their locations, and the impacts on source populations. So what does trade really look like? And how does it scale? Well, this is some analysis that will be coming out later this week, and some of our panelists are involved in this paper. This is the latest breakdown of global use and trade. So the circle you see at the top is the use and trade of plants, as we'll hear more of later in the session. Measuring the trade of plants is massively difficult because you can put it in an envelope and send it through the post. And if you just so happen to have a bunch of orchids with you when you go through your international airline flight, unless you are going to a country like Australia, you can probably bring it in without any problem, despite the fact it could be slightly listed. So within this plot, the gray areas represent when a species was in more than one data source. The solid blocks of any other color represent when it was only in a single data source. Now, you may not be familiar with the terminology here. Lemmus is the US Fish and Wildlife Services source of data. 27% of animal species were only recorded in Lemmus, and almost no other countries have equivalent databases that are openly accessible. So Canada has something called Rapita. In the European Union, they have Trace, but neither of these are openly accessible, and there are problems with how the data is recorded. And so when we look at the total number of species in trade, not only is this data massively fragmented, but our previous assessments were a tiny fraction of what's in trade. And this is how fragmented that trade is. And so any analysis you see is probably relying on a limited subsection of different sources. And that means how many species are in trade? Well, I will give you the estimated number, but it is an underestimate because the European Union is likely to be importing more species than America, but the data is not available. And new and emerging markets such as across Asia are starting for the pet trade, but there is no data on what that trade looks like. However, From initial analysis that's been done, some of these Asian countries have very different profiles when it comes to trade. So if you are in Japan and you want a reptile, the genera that we are recording are a different selection. And so this number is not only growing, but our knowledge now is only a fraction of what is in trade. So data on trade is highly fragmented, meaning that even Understanding how many species are in trade is massively challenging. The total number, based on our latest estimate, is over 107,000 species of animal and plant and some fungi in use and trade. This includes almost 50,000 animal species, which represents about 42% of described vertebrates. That means almost half of the species you'll see on Earth of animals may be in trade. However, of this, 27% of the animal species were only recorded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, meaning that our understanding of trade elsewhere is hugely fragmented. And if we look at the KMGBF, Whilst it has a target on sustainable trade, target 5, as well as the livelihood provision in target 9, and the inclusion of aquaculture and agriculture in target 10, the headline indicator for target 5 is based on fish stocks. Now, we'll hear more about that later. Yes, it's a useful indicator for fish. But fish, based on the As Fish list, which is where the stock list comes from. represents around 1.8 to 2.5% of the species in trade, meaning that whilst it may be a fantastic indicator for that percentage of species, it misses up potentially up to 98% of the total number of species that are traded, meaning that not only are they not reflected within the KMGBF, But given that landlocked countries cannot report on their fish trade, some countries are unable to report based on a headline indicator. Furthermore, around 76% of CITES appendix listed species appear to be in trade. The 25 or so percent of species that aren't in trade are mainly orchids, because orchids make up 70% of CITES species, and they were listed because they are seen as lookalikes. However, when suggestions have been made

to uplift families of other groups, often that is pushed back on. And so how we adequately represent other taxa remains challenging because the majority of traded species other than fish, timber, and orchids are not represented within these global protocols. Stupid magnets. And LEMIS included overall about 66% of the global traded animal species overall. do not have equivalent data for other regions. So you want to see if what that looks like overall, the GBIF indicator covers about 2000 or so species, and yet there are more than 107,000 species in some degree of use and trade, which is more than double the previous estimate, underscoring just how incomplete our overall knowledge is of the dimensions of trade. Now, this is from the US. As I said, it covers about 66% of all traded animal species. And within this, lemmis is about 21,000 species or so of animals. And when we add on the CITES data for plants, almost 30,000 species are going into the US alone. And yet, part of this circle on fish is all that is represented within that indicator for the US. But potentially not if you are an ornamental marine fish where you might be collected from the reef and you are unlikely to feed into those estimates. When population data does exist for terrestrial populations, traded populations tend to show an average decrease of 50 to 62%. Now, of course, some are well managed and they're increasing. Equally, some are not managed and may be extirpated entirely. There is huge variability. and the majority of populations have no data. We also need to think about where these species are coming from, and if they're wild caught or captive bred, because from a sustainability standpoint, all of these are major considerations when it comes to understanding the impacts of trade. And of course, we also know, need to know how many species are in trade. So if we look at the numbers, this is just for the United States where we have higher quality data through the US Fish and Wildlife's LEMIS data. We can see that there is a difference depending on if you look at the number of entries, i.e. the number of shipments, versus the number of individuals. But for many groups, high percentages of animals are still recorded as coming from the wild. And this is despite acts like the US Wild Bird Conservation Act, which should largely prohibit the import of wild birds. We can also map out where these are coming from and see that the footprint on different populations of different taxa around the world are vastly different, depending on what metrics you use. So this is looking at the number of species, and you can see just for the US, it has a huge footprint of global trade that is largely unmonitored. and for which we have very little data. Now, if we look for the vertebrates, this is only for the vertebrates because we have some data on where they are native to. What we also find is that even for appendix three species, considerable proportions are reported to be exported from the wild in countries they are not native to. Now, I want to draw your attention to this mysterious country. No, it's not Atlantis, it's called **. It means We didn't record the country. Now, the problem is that some of those places are Appendix III. Now, whether or not there is access to that data somewhere, the Lacey Act states that you cannot legally import animals in contravention of national laws. If you do not know where that animal has come from, you do not know what national laws there were, and you cannot assess if it was legal or not. What we also see is that there is both mis- and disinformation. Animals may be laundered through a third party country, either because it is more permissive or because someone didn't bother to database it properly. And so there are huge issues in accurately interpreting the trade because of errors with how it's databased. What we can also do is map out what that might look like as a footprint for different groups. So on one side there, this is from some of our earlier analysis, you can see the reptiles. And on the top, this is the online trade. In the middle, that's that US trade. And the bottom there is Psyche's trade. Let's say I wanted to start a project when I was looking at areas impacted by high numbers of traded reptiles. If I use the CITES data, I could not do it, because too few species are listed, approximately 9% versus the more than 45% of species that are in trade. And so if we are thinking about the impacts on these species, if you have no population data, you have no trade data, you cannot assess if it's sustainable. So overall, Based on seizures, about 99.9% of recorded data is legal. Of course, seizures are only what we detect of illegal trade, and it is not a representative sample, but it means we need to change the dialogue from always thinking that only illegal trade can be a problem. Underregulated and unsustainable trade are a huge problem, and for many taxonomic groups, we simply do not have the data to assess sustainability. Focusing largely on illegal trade ignores the focus and the need for focus on many species that are in trade that may not be sustainable, but for which we have too little information to gauge the impact. Large numbers of individuals come from the wild, with over 90% of species having at least some wild-caught individuals. And for most species in trade, we have no population data, and we may not know their distribution. New species are also regularly in trade. For example, in our global analysis of reptiles, we found more than nine species of reptile in trade within the year that they were scientifically described, whilst over 100 potentially undescribed arachnid species were also listed in trade online. Most countries do not database species that are either not being monitored by the FAO, are not timber, and are not CITES listed. Outside the US, there is no equally comparable and representative data set of traded species. IPBES estimated that there were around 50,000 wild species in trade. Our latest estimate shows that it is more than double that number. In terms of outstanding gaps, the data remains highly fragmented. The Lemis system is the most representative system across taxa, despite only being a national system. And TRACE, which is the EU equivalent system, needs to both be more available, but also needs to use comparable standards, making the data interoperable and open, so we can get a more complete understanding of what's in trade altogether. This is what you get if you search for legal trade. And if we look at how that compares, that image represents this tiny volume and proportion of trade, whereas Target 5 headline indicator largely pertains to that block and part of the gray block at the bottom. We need to do better to understand the true dimensions of trade across taxa because we cannot manage what we don't understand. And at the moment, we're not collecting the data we need to understand this issue. Furthermore, if from the known data we look at legal versus illegal trade, we can see that for many taxa there are huge volumes of underregulated and undermonitored legal trade, and we need better data. And furthermore, even CITES listing fails to serve smaller taxa, with countries that have had sanctions on them for seahorse trade still being the largest global traders in those species. From a sustainability perspective, there are gaps along the entire train. However, much of our global supply of wildlife has focused on the bit that we consume the most of. And yes, that's crucially important, but we also need to monitor growing sectors such as the exotic pet trade. This leaves major gaps for other groups, particularly the pet trade, and also the fur and skin trade. While some of those species are CITES listed, many are not. The headline indicator based on the national report is the main reported indicator. Whilst it may be a fantastic indicator for the species it covers, it fails to cover the majority of tax that are in trade. Legislation and targets still need to catch up with what modern trade looks like, and regulations exist to curb some risk. but they are often incomplete and overlooked. We need to think about new systems of trade so that we have a comprehensive understanding of trade across taxa. For example, if we were to combine customs forms where you have values with a zoo sanitary certification, you'd be able to implement tools that detect irregularities such as irregular pricing, and therefore identify where illegal laundering may be going on. There are solutions that do not increase the reporting burden on countries and that would open up the ability to develop new tools for countries to understand trade, with implications for both biosecurity and economic benefits. We need to have discussions about these kinds of solutions that can help countries understand and manage trade, as well as understanding where trade may be unsustainable. I'm not going to take questions now. There is a link to the paper that I spent some of this talk talking about, which will be coming out next Friday. And with that, happy to share these slides with people later on, but I'm going to hand on and we're going to talk about the seizure data. So thank you all for listening, and I'm going to call on Anastasia for the next talk. Thank you all.

Thank you, Alice. That's a very hard act to follow. I'll try to be, I'll try to keep up. But, yeah, very, very nice to see you all in this event. So I'm Anastasiya Moshina, I work in TRAFFIC. I am director of our European and Central Asia program office. And I've been in TRAFFIC, which is focusing on the issues of wildlife trade for nearly 20 years. And what I'll do today, I will give a super quick introduction to what we do. I will talk about illegal wildlife trade, which is what Alice asked me to do, and then I will talk about legal trade, which she didn’t ask me to talk about, but I think it’s impossible to talk about illegal wildlife trade without thinking about legal trade. And I agree completely, what we should be thinking about is sustainability, you know, illegality is almost irrelevant. I will also talk a little bit more beyond what we know and don’t know about some solutions around managing and measuring this complexity. So let’s go, we are going to try to make it work, excellent. So TRAFFIC is a non-governmental organization, we have been in existence for 50 years, and it’s no mistake that it’s nearly the same number of years as CITES because TRAFFIC has been created as an NGO to support the trade monitoring when CITES as a convention came into force. We're working to ensure that trade in wild species is legal and sustainable for the benefit of planet and people. On the map here, you see our nine regional offices. We are a very small organization, actually, we're about 160 people around the world, so very thinly spread with headquarters in the UK, but also offices in a lot of places which are so important for wildlife trade as hotspots of sourcing, transit, or consumption. Now, illegal wildlife trade. Okay, so a couple of kind of issues and, you know, or issues we all have with this definition. So first, illegality may involve all sort of aspects of off-take of species. It could do with hunting, poaching, violation of national or international laws, it involves movement of different species and products across international borders. Of course, CITES exists as a convention to regulate the international trade, but there are other laws that regulate trade in non-CITES listed species. So when we speak about illegal trade, it could actually mean a lot of different things. So there is IEU regulations, there are deforestation regulations, there is legal timber trade regulations that are all really in the scope of what we're talking about. A really interesting question as well, how far we go with the definition of legality here, and I think it's very, very important because what all this is talking about are the laws that are defining the resource management, really. What about the laws around modern slavery and human rights? So how do we think about supply chains that may be perfectly legal from the extraction of resources perspective and sustainability, but are not okay from the perspective of human rights violations in supply chains? Really important question to think about illicit trade practices, which are very, very, very pervasive around the trade issues. So illegal wildlife trade is global, is lucrative. So, you know, as you will notice here in this discussion that nobody really knows the answer. If somebody tells you they know exactly, I know the paper is trying to be definitive and give some numbers, but if somebody is saying that there is this one magical number and we know exactly what legal or illegal trade is. or what its impacts are, it's not really true. So we approximate, we try to find the best definition possible for it. You know, some quotations say illegal wildlife trade and wildlife crime is the fourth criminal activity in the world in terms of the value after drugs and arms and human trafficking. High profits and no risk is very important, so the penalties paid or the chances of prosecutions if illegal trade has happened are very low, hence it creates more opportunities for trade. Often the trade follows other crime areas, not always, but it can, drugs, weapons, money laundering. Very important as well. Any wildlife crime is a financial crime, so I'm not going to dwell on this topic very much here, but it's so incredibly important that we think about what finances, how the funds are moving across the supply chains, which banks are underpinning licit or illicit businesses and practices. Often, there are highly organized criminal networks that are at work. Frequently, it is facilitated by corruption, which may be a petty corruption at a very low level. So we looked at the corruption, for example, in wild plant supply chains, which may take very different shapes from a large-scale systemic corruption that relates to organized crime networks, and very diverse supply chain and demand. The reason it's important to understand this is because solutions or attempts to measure and manage this will need to be very nuanced. This is maybe case in point, don't have time for a quiz, but some of these things are probably more recognizable if you think illegal wildlife trade. So maybe you think rhino horn. Elephant ivory, and you are right, maybe you are thinking animal trophies, again, is a lot more in the news than sturgeon caviar. There was an excellent side event here at COP last week talking about the sturgeon caviar, which is probably the most lucrative by value wildlife trade product per kilo. But also, a little picture in the middle with little transparent things is a little species of European glass eels, which for the European Union, which is where I do most of my work now, is one of the biggest wildlife crime enforcement concerns, with estimates of 2 to 3 billion euros of harm a year from those organized criminal network that are exporting European glass eels, baby eels. from the EU to other countries with markets in Asia and elsewhere. But it also includes plants, so the lovely picture on the top row is a cyclamen. So you may know, maybe, I don't know if you have them growing in your gardens, if you ever see them, they actually come from this region, which is really fascinating. A lot of legal and illegal trade in bulbs and ornamental plants. And then there is this thing about Not everything that has been illegal is illegal when it reaches you as a consumer. So critical issue here, what do we consider illegal wildlife trade? Timber, fisheries, maybe I'll give example of timber as some of the very kind of complex supply chains. Estimates are suggesting 10 to 30% of timber are traded illegally. If you think about tropical timber, anything between 50 to 90% of timber harvested illegally in Africa and Latin America. However, timber harvested illegally doesn't necessarily arise through the illicit supply chains because it gets merged into legal timber, wood products, furniture supply chains. So, what is critical here is not just enforcement and thinking about stopping something, it is really about transparency and traceability of supply chains. Such critical tool, and I think, you know, there's a lot of opportunities, i think, to be a lot more accepting of this multitude of approaches that need to be implemented when you think about illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade. What about sustainable trade? Okay, so again, Alice has shown some much probably much updated figures as well. I'm literally just quoting here two reports that were, you know, fantastically foundational for, and if you don't know them, please look them up. This is so important. So one World Wildlife Trade report that was produced in 2022, it's just looking at the legal trade inside this listed species and products. But, you know, it gives us a sense of Just the multitude of species, taxa, and the values that it generates through legal trade. What's important with all this is that it's quite often, and it's important at the Convention of Biological Diversity to be thinking about the conservation impact of overexploitation. But we also keep thinking about that objective two, about the benefits to people from sustainable use. We're also thinking about objective three, about equitable benefit sharing. All this is relevant to wildlife trade issues. People are dependent on the trade and their species around the world. Where it says in the IUCN assessment of use of wild species, one in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and medicine. This is not people in some particular regions of the world. This is people globally. So one in five here, I can't count very quickly, you know, dependent on this through the food we use, through the products we consume. And there are some, you're right, there are much greater figures around the economic value of legal trade in wild species and products than illegal. Very important context, but let's keep in mind the question of what is legal and illegal. Let's keep in mind the question of legality becoming illegality here. This is my personal pet peeve situation. I don't know if you recognize a lot of these products, do you? Fanta, Toffee, you know, shoe polish, all these products include at least one wild plant ingredient. I can't play this game now, talk to me later if you want to. But this is so important. This is not a game, this is not people in global south, let's say, or people in particular regions that depend on wild species. We all do. We all do depend on wild species for everyday lives. Now, what can we do? I'm giving you a couple of insights very quickly, shortage of time and so on. First, making trade visible and actionable. And again, I think the work that Alice has been leading around putting numbers and names to the trade is so foundational. TRAFFIC is doing in our existence for 50 years, I feel like we've evolved a lot from being able to monitor trade and understand the numbers, to taking actions. So give you some examples of what can be done and is done around addressing illegal wildlife trade issues. There are databases and portals, and I invite you to, again, the slides are available. I invite you to just look them up. All this is public free information that you can access for free. So there is wildlife trade portal that traffic is hosting that includes incidents, seizures, market observation data. There are trade and wildlife information exchange networks. This is not public information, that's locked for the law enforcement authorities, but it is an incredibly important opportunity for the countries and law enforcement agencies to talk to each other and try to solve issues as quick as possible, thinking about identification of species, following the roots, and so on. Timber Stats is a really interesting example of, I guess, statistical tool that tries to think about discrepancies in trade data. Species by species, the information is very limited. So if we think about the big harmonized system codes that exist for some products, there is a way to create a system of kind of red flag indicators, if you wish, which is based on discrepancy of import and export trade data. So very simple idea, but I think it can start creating opportunities for the governments and national governments to be taking action. And then, of course, we live in the world of AI, automated monitoring of websites, you know, very, very important. A lot of the trade has moved online, is operating online, so these opportunities are massive. Traceability solutions exist. What I want to say by this slide is that it's not all doom and gloom. There are so much opportunities. We need them be more mainstream. We need them to be brought in more supply chains. So traceability solutions for anything from timber to sharks and rays exist. You know, there are multiple, of course, you know, ground up, you know, multiple projects that try to encourage the use of regulatory frameworks. use of market-based solutions, certifications, standards to be able to ensure that and demonstrate trade is sustainable, legal, and I'll use the word equitable, which I haven't used so much before, because this is critical as well. And to this point, I want to introduce you to two kind of tools very quickly that are relevant to the measuring as well as managing wildlife trade and measuring in the context of indicators. So first is what we called five-dimensional sustainability assessment framework, or what we call it 50 shades of sustainability. It's a framework that tries to give us, let's call it, a definition of the comprehensive way of how you could think about sustainable use of species, but pushing the definition of sustainability here. I think as a lot of us, I'm guessing maybe conservationists in the room are thinking about sustainability from population studies, from understanding what is a healthy offtake that would allow populations to recover. We're pushing it to say sustainability is critical also from economic, social, health, and social and ecological, social, economic, human health, and welfare perspectives. So we developed something by looking at a huge number of reference points, site is not detriment finding guidance, standards, certification systems in different areas. I came up with this list of very specific 42 principles. that are trying to give a basic definition of what does sustainable use of any species look like. Some of it will be irrelevant, so welfare issues are more relevant to animals, not plants or fungi. And it is open for testing. And I wanted to say that we have implemented it in a few experiences. We've published this. published this in a few articles, please look it up or talk to me later, I can give you references. We looked at the game meat production in Tanzania, reptile skin production in Indonesia, game ranching in South Africa, and we also had some experiences of colleagues looking at the application of this framework for plants, for fungi, for some marine resources. And it works. It really, you know, it allows to bring together some conversation about what does sustainability and sustainable use look like if you were to think beyond biological definition. I don't believe that the system that is biologically sustainable, but is unfair, is not based on good principle of economics and business plan, cannot be sustainable in the long term. It just does not how supply chains work. So I think this attempts to give a bit more definition and opportunity to think about sustainable use in a much more comprehensive perspective. I also think it has really great potential for indicators that can be used at national level, supply chain by supply chain, as we move forward with the implementation of those complex targets that require supply chains being as sustainable use, being legal, sustainable, safe, and equitable, and beneficial. And the final thing to give a little voice for, and luckily one of the managers of the project is sitting just over there, Molly, so if you want to know more about this, Molly knows a lot more. New project that is led by a whole group of partners, revolutionizing wildlife use and trade monitoring by harnessing social media and digital big data to support global biodiversity policy. We're just in the beginning of this process, about eight months into two year project, and the idea is to try and fill in some of the gaps in headline and other indicators around target five in particular, but also as relation to other targets. We're looking in particular at the big data from social media, so again, recognizing the online trade aspect of trade, but also it goes beyond online wildlife trade, trying to support parties with the implementation of these targets, also likely beyond 2030. We have a fantastic stakeholder working group to give a bit of a sounding board sense of whether it's moving in the right direction. This is to give you a sense, none of this exists so far, but this is the plans to develop. This is indicator themes. Your feedback is, by the way, very, very welcome. So if you, again, Molly is over there. And I'll say here, join us, please. There is a QR code here, and we have some flyers here as well to pick up. So on this, I'm going to say, thank you so much. I want to leave you with a picture of a smiling glass eel, baby glass eel. And, you know, really encourage us to think, even in these conversations, you know, I think this topic is so foundational for CBD. You know, wildlife trade and use touches on all objectives of the Convention. And I think this, you know, despite it being actually quite marginalized for so long, you know, we have this opportunity with targets 5 and 9 and 10 and 22 and others that allow us to hopefully mainstream and get some excitement and implementation on the ground. And I think we know what to do, you know, we have so many examples and good practices and best practices, they just need to be picked up and used. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, anastasia, for not just giving us doom and gloom, which I'm very good at, but giving us a message of hope and how we can do better. Now, at the moment, and it's been mentioned previously, One of our main indicators within the context of the CBD focuses on fish stocks. And so next, we have Dr. Kim Friedman to tell us more about that indicator and everything behind it, as well as how we have better monitoring in part of the sector. So over to you, Kim. I am going to open it.

Thank you very much, Alice, and thank you, Anastasia. The wildlife trade offers us a vision and, more importantly, a lever for conservation. And when we think about what we've just heard, sustainability and trade talks about accountability, transparency, equitability. I don't know about yourself, but those two talks were so full of information that you almost need a few minutes to decompress and take in just the sheer range of what's being spoken about here. And within each of those elements, the lever that could offer us, the formalization of understanding. could offer us as typically biologists, and maybe a more realistic way of moving the needle for people in nature. Anyway, as I said, thanks Alice and Anastasia. Obviously, fish are wildlife and probably one of the largest wildlife-based food systems globally. And I think we all recognize that the global community is challenged in getting the balance right here. And the global community is getting more concerned about the state of nature, the planet's bank account. And this is translating for political reasons to elevating trade, environmental, and social regulations as a political response. But better formalizing these relationships without, in this case, aquatic food systems could be a very good thing, as we would get more investment into the things we care about. Before we jump straight into the view of animals, I just want to point out that we're also got to consider the backdrop that since 2014, the decline in global hunger, which was a great success story, has actually been reversed. And now global hunger is increasing. And I think this is where we've got to think about getting the balance right in how we look after nature and how we take into account the people. From a FAO point of view and from Target 5, which looks at trade and the status of fish stocks, I'm going to start with a view of fish stocks and then get into trade, because it's only through understanding their status that we can work out how well trade's going or not. And when ACDC brought up their first songs, where people might be old enough in the room to know, we're at 10% overfished. And now we're at 37.6% overfished. So we're going in the wrong direction, and we have been going in the wrong direction quite a time. By landings, though, 73% of catches come from biologically sustainable stocks. This is despite, this decline is despite the fact that aquatic food production over the same period has grown at around twice the rate of human population growth since 1960. So that's a link to trade. Even though we're doing worse, we're supplying more food than the growth of population from waters. Okay, I just want to remind everyone that this signal is largely a fisheries signal. It's built for a fisheries audience and fisheries managers since about the 1950s and '60s and formalized in the '70s. But here, I want to show you a different graph. This graph looks by ocean basin and shows you two important figures. The first important figure is that through time. Fisheries managers have managed to capture by species the catches more and more, rather than groups of species, which allows us a much more accurate signal about what's being taken. And secondly, I want you to look at the overfished figure, because this only looks, and FAO's signal only looks at commercial stocks. If we take a much broader vision of biodiversity of fish stocks, of fish species generally, we see that a lot less than 5% of species are coming from overfished stocks when you look at the major basins. So why is this important? Because the metric championed as showing decline of fish stocks in the oceans, although an important descriptor of commercial fishery stock health, is but a small percentage of the fish species in total, the whole ecosystem of fish in the ocean. Okay, but let's move on because FAO's work has moved on largely from just looking at production to a broader vision of systems. So not just fish from the water, but looking at trade chains, conservation risks, and other through an ecosystems approach. And FAO's view, just in case you're interested, can be disaggregated by area, can be disaggregated by species groups and such like. There's lots of resources for you to bury down to individual stocks if anyone's interested. And we also recognize that some of the inconsistencies that we find is largely due to the weaknesses in the data we have. So we're always trying to improve our data. That signal generally came from about 440 stocks and is now coming from 2,700 stocks. However, we still are weak in data poor and small scale fisheries where catches are taken. broadly based and broadly spread in small numbers, and we're trying to upgrade that signal. Inland fisheries is another area where the signal is rather poor. And these low volume and often high value, both in money and in biodiversity important species, sometimes non-target species also, not necessarily well represented. So we've got lots of work to do. Okay, so what do we know about trade? I've just gone and dipped into the bucket of some relevant data sources that I think would interest you in moving the signal from understanding what comes from the water to look more generally across the value chains. So one of the key places to go and look is something called GlobeFish. GlobeFish has been around since, let's say, the last 40 years or so. This is FAO's effort to understand fish trade movements and fish trade commodities. They produce a price dashboard, they produce country briefs, they have a series of, oops, that one went a bit quickly, but they have a series of nodes, be it InfoPesca, InfoFish, InfoPesh, basically a series of groupings around 64 countries. And they also put out cauterary species analysis, so that's more of a species view. So that's one place where I'd recommend you, if you didn't find the actual species that you're interested in, understand the framework that the UN's using for tracking fish trade and see if potentially there's a way of extending that to species of your interest and learn from the over 40 years of work of tracking fish trade by the FAO. I also recommend you to understand quite clearly the opportunities of World Customs Organization of understanding HS codes, and that harmonized system of codes, basically been around since about 1983, entered into the force in the late '80s, and alongside fish stat fisheries data from the 1960s and UN Comtrade fisheries from 1962 onwards, we can start to scrape together decent understanding, which gets much more reliable from the 80s and 90s. But recognize also that we have some weakness in those particular codes, in that those codes do not extend across all of the groups that we might have an interest in. But there's another area where FAO has been working because we've been extending those particular codes to species of interests. Now let's have a look at where FAO could explore some of the data weaknesses, FAO with partners could explore some of the data weaknesses. And we've been working on this for a number of decades, but I'd like to share with you some areas where we've made an effort. So one particular study looking at small scale fisheries is the Illuminating Hidden Harvests. And this was done alongside with WorldFish and Duke, and there is someone in the audience, Dave Mills, who's actually one of the chapter authors here. It wasn't particularly focused on trade, but it did delve into the elements of understanding these fisheries which make up a large part of the catch and definitely a large part of the interest in fisheries around the world, and how we could better tell the story of those particular catches and people and their interrelationship with markets, and just how these fisheries are being shaped by both international markets and how they're changing due to those factors. So the IHH study that is published and is available would be a good opportunity to extend that study into the future to look more at its interlinkages of trade. And I recommend any donors or countries that are looking for levers to handle our understanding of fish in trade to maybe pick this study up, look what's been learned to date, and see what's possible to do in the future. FAO has a large element under its blue transformations framework to look at aquatic food system value chain work. And there's a Fish4ACP project, which for a number of years has been working globally to not just formalize the different value chains around certain fish species, specifically in developing countries, but to help people understand how these work and help to understand how they might be improved so there's less fish waste, there's more returns, more equitability, and getting back to those questions of sustainability around accountability and transparency. There's a large amount of work under that. And what I'm taking the sense of is that there is lots and lots of work through traffic, through World Fish, through all of the agencies that are busy in this space. incredible gap in an opportunity of linking all of these data sets together to bring a more comprehensive picture rather than the snapshots that are being taken. And this is where I just bring up these many other issue-focused studies, and we've heard from Anastasia. And the CITES has been a large push into marine species. So basically, CITES parties are now favoring marine species by far the greatest number of animals entering the appendices of marine species. In the last two conference of party, 350% more marine species were listed than in the previous five COPs combined. So the Overton window of what's important for looking at conservation focused species under CITES is really moving towards marine species, and this offers us another opportunity. Because of the CITES trade database, and we've got Tia in the room from the CITES trade database, so we've got all the players here, but not necessarily linking up all of the records. We've got obviously traffic running species focus, there's a couple of reports here that are very interesting, tracking sharks, tracking abalone, eel marketing which we've heard before. We've got the aquarium industry also looking at flows between biodiversity focused areas and trade. We've got a number of reports that are very, very well and comprehensively written, but don't actually interlink with all the other reports. So it's very much bitty at the moment, and that's where the opportunity, I think, lies. If we really want to use this lever successfully, is to bring all of these disparate elements together and build a comprehensive way of speaking to trade, which everybody can use equally. OK, so why is there not more investment in fish? I know that we heard from Alice that fish are just a small part of the world, but obviously, I'm here to tell you completely different. Trade in fish, as she mentioned, is 184 billion a year. Well, if we put all the meat products together, that's beef, pork, poultry, that's only 198 billion. So basically, fish trade is enormous. And if you want to talk about Biodiversity, I've got no idea why the CBD isn't just all focused on fish, because if we think about biomass of wildlife of animals, 78% of that biomass sits in water, not on land, and almost 60% of it's fish. And if you've got really, really good eyesight, you might be able to see that little elephant down there and the humans and the livestock. They're piddlers. They really don't have much of a game to play, although they might take the focus of this convention often. So what I'm saying is, if we really want to do some favors for biodiversity, let's think of the marine environment and aquatic systems, because not only is it a biomass bonus, It's an amazing diversity bonus. And if we're looking, for example, from the ocean, we're thinking about absolutely the broadest array of life on the planet. So the taxonomic groupings called phyla, there's over double found in the ocean than are found on land. OK, that's my sales pitch for marine and fishery species. I just want to point out that, as I said, FAO's work's moving from production focus to systems focus, and we need to systematically connect all these information sources to improve our access to the levers that we're going to be able to pull instead of necessarily just going down the biodiversity or biological viewpoint. We have to connect what we care about in nature. to the pressures and the importance in trade, because this is an amazing opportunity for us to speak more broadly to the systems that we all care about. And really, if we want to conserve biodiversity, my pitch is to not necessarily think of fish as only being a small part, but seeing it as an amazing window to do a great job in conservation and also a great job for people. Thank you.

Thank you, Kim, for taking us to the ocean and showing us a little bit of what's there. Fish, of course, represent a huge part of the human diet, and yet when we think about wildlife trade, that's not what we picture when by volume it is the largest amount of wildlife trade. So I'm sure that when you came to a wildlife trade session, you'd be seeing, you thought, i'll see lots of tigers and pangolins, especially when we talk about illegal trade. And so we're going to talk about illegal trade now, but in plants, where it's often overlooked and particularly hard to monitor. So I'm very pleased to bring to this stage Laxmi Aggarwal, who will be telling us about the illegal trade of plants. So over to you, Laxmi, and I'll just get your slide.

Thank you, Alice, and thank you everyone for joining us here today. I am gonna stand because I haven't sat for a while, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to stand. So my name is Dr. Lakshmi Agarwal, and I am the Conservation Policy Manager at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, which is an organization that has been working with plants and botanic gardens around the world for 40 years next year. We're also secretariat to the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation, which was adopted by the CBD at COP16, decision 1620, which brings us here today. But today's focus is on one of the tangents of the BGCI, which is the Illegal Plant Trade Coalition. So what exactly is the Illegal Plant Trade Coalition? It was formed by the International Advisory Council of Botanic Gardens, who finally found that they were actually getting a high number of volume of confiscated plants coming in. And it's got into a stage where management of these confiscated illegal specimen is getting quite difficult. So they decided to come together and form the coalition to address the trade in illegal plants. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, we're just trying to understand something in a trade that is illegal and that has been previously very little understood. So, it's how we protect wild species, protect threatened plants, and support behavior change while promoting sustainable alternatives. What is understood by the coalition is that you can't just focus on one. So we are multi-pronged, and we're hoping that everything across the chain of supply can run in parallel. So we are quite new. We launched at the WCC at the IUCN in Abu Dhabi only last year. Since then, we do have a number of keystone partners who are driving the committee. They sit on the board and they do tell us which way we need to go next. You can see that we have a good mix of entities here, including zoos, and including IUCN SSC and the CEC. So we want to bring in all the educational components of this as well. We've also got SANBI here, who are our keystone partner, represented by Monica Muela, who will be presenting with us later. Our partnership isn't just with Keystones, we also then have action partners and outreach partners. Some of our action partners, RBG, Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, are also here. All of us working together to understand what exactly is happening with the illegal plants. So why is it important? I mean, I know we had a great slide before with the biomass. I'm not quite sure how big the one for plants would be, but hopefully someone, if there's any scientists in the room who can help me with that.

Much bigger.

So we can understand from that that the economic value, when we're talking about it, the scale of the illegal trade and the species loss, when we address it in that sense, is very high, which has a biodiversity impact. Because if there are no plants, then the overall food chain itself gets impacted. And this then goes into the lack of awareness. So there's a number of people that we talk to, especially through our botanic garden visitors, which actually tallies to over 1 billion a year. And majority of them are not aware that there is an actual illegal trade in plants. For them, plants are sustainable, can't go extinct, are propagated, and that's how they come to market. They find it quite difficult to believe that it is a wild specimen that is being taken from South Africa or Namibia and then ending up on eBay for sale. So, the trade in plants, and this includes all plants, is much higher than the trade in animals. It goes up to 9.3 billion. At the Coalition currently, as you can see from the little logos at the bottom, we have decided to focus on ornamental species only. This is just to start us off because the pie is just too big. So we're just getting in there by little by little, and then perhaps extending to medicinal plants, then perhaps moving forward to other types that are coming through the trade. But one of the key challenges we are facing is something called plant blindness, the recognition that there is plants, that they are wildlife and trafficked and leading to extinction. At the same time, what we do understand, and this is through the Global Strategy of Plant Conservation as well, is that the KMGBF targets have been tailored to include plants, and the coalition within that feeds into this, including target 5, target 4, and target 9, as our key targets that are primarily addressed by the coalition. Thereafter, we do have target 1, 3, 14, 15, 20, and 21 that is also addressed by the coalition on the peripheries of our approach. The illegal plant trade is a global issue. We are actually seeing a very big change of hands, countries in transition, and have we seen the trade is in hand with other illegal trades, including drugs, weapons, and animal and animal parts. One of our Action partners in Somalia have identified plants that were then found in Toronto by our keystone partner on eBay. So within our coalition and the talkings between our partners, we do understand the trade is live and international. Somalia in itself, we have our action partners who are SSI based there. They are dealing with a number of challenges in addressing conservation in itself, and of course then bringing in the challenges of the illegal plant trade. That being the civil unrest in the country, the focus on bringing in first the rest and then conservation. But our partners have been working really well with the communities and have found that a number of plants are being trafficked through Yemen, heading towards other areas. And some of the transition countries that they have identified, such as Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, heading internationally, which they are looking to get a bit more data on. Plants are being trafficked in a manner that is being concealed, which tells that there is an awareness that what is being conducted is illegal. So people that are in this business understand that what is being done is an offense. They are being trafficked by small boats informally. They're being trafficked on a person, false documentations, and local trade routes. This is very similar to what you would see with animal and animal parts. At the same time, we also have South Africa, which is a hotspot, bordering especially in the Karoo biome with Namibia. 40% of the species there are found nowhere else on Earth, and many of them are narrow endemics to the area. SANBI, our partner here with Monica, are managing 11 national botanic gardens across the South African provinces. Their confiscation data itself shows that levels that the gardens are dealing with, the highest being between 2021 and 2023. This also correlates with the time when COVID was happening and there was an influx of purchases of plants to bring nature at home. The direct cause and causation is not fully established, but there are papers that suggest that this could be the reason why. However, as our partners have suggested, since 2024 to 2026, instead of the live specimens themselves, there is now an increase of trade in seeds for the very same plants. Conophytum is one of the genuses that is definitely being poached to extinction. 95%, that's 188 of the taxa, are threatened. 97% have illegal collection records as a threat. So although they're facing other challenges, such as climate change and habitat degradation, equally impacting them is the illegal trade. So the illegal harvest, the unregulated and unreported harvest of the plants. Among this is also the cacti. Some of you may be aware of the Atacama operation that was happening. Then this was mainly to do with the capybara, also managed with our action partners, Chester Zoo, who are working with the authorities there. 92% of them are critically endangered. And the number one reason is actually the trade and the poaching. It has got to a stage with even animal trade, where we're seeing foreign nationals being arrested in other countries, forming syndicates specifically to the illegal plants. So what exactly is driving the trade? There is, of course, social media, which is a double-edged sword for us in plants, because firstly, on one side, it does help us address plant blindness, and secondly, on the other side, it is what's promoting the demand. So if we have an influence, for example, who suggests XYZ plant, the demand for that increases online, and majority of it does, unfortunately, end up being wild specimens taken illegally. At the same time, there is, of course, the issue of supply, which is coming in from areas where there is poverty, where communities are being engaged into poaching the plants, as well as the risk associated with plants. I think if you are caught with elephant ivory or rhino horn, you are known to understand that you will be going away for long. Whereas if you're caught with a certain plant or seeds, you feel that maybe it's just be a slap on the wrist and you'll get away with it. So it's almost like a gateway entry point into the sort of wider illegal wildlife trade. But we are seeing an increase of that in the illegal plants. So what exactly can be done? Like I said, it's not reinventing the wheel. It's very much similar to what has been done with the illegal trade in animals. You have to reduce the demand, you need a livelihood, law and policy, and enforcement. However, when it comes to plants, we do have a number of extra challenges, especially in terms of dealing with training and capacity building. How exactly are we addressing plant identification? It's a very complicated situation where at points you're going to end up asking a customs officer to do a full botany course just to be able to understand what is going through legally and illegally. At the same time, we're dealing with specimens that are arriving in gardens that survive over 100 years. How are we going to address their conservation when it's surpassing human generation? At the same time, when we don't know what exactly is coming through customs, we are more likely to lose plants that have been taken because they're not understood to be the last specimen. So what exactly is the coalition doing to address this? We are looking at a number of areas. Like I said, it has to be multi-pronged. This goes from public awareness, capacity building in areas such as enforcement where it's needed. research and data collection, as well as policy and advocacy. We're not doing this alone, of course, we have all our partners with us, but which is also why BGCI is in the right place to sort of address this, because with 40 years of networks and 40 years of databases, including World Flora Online, there are areas where data can be pulled in to address this issue. For instance, if we find a plant is extinct somewhere, we do have PlantSearch to find if there's an ex situ conserved specimen somewhere that can help address and rewild plants. We have had some policy successes. At the Laos IUCN World Conservation Congress, we did see the passing of Motion 83. This is the first time that succulent plants and the illegal trade of plants was fully addressed at an international level. This then led to the Samarkand information document. So overall, through the coalition, we are able to make a voice at an international platform that there needs to be an addressing of the illegal trade in plants. At the same time, as I previously mentioned, our membership, our gardens, they get over 1 billion visitors a year. So if we're talking about raising awareness, speaking to the public, conducting them in a manner that we can say, please head towards the propagated plants, this is how you tell a wild specimen from a propagated specimen, we can address the demand. Of course, there's public awareness and communication, we have social media, which is a must. There's research and data with BGCI offices all over the world, with membership all over the world, including very rural areas. We are able to gather the data, present our technical reports, and understand the wider picture of how exactly the trade is taking place. So this is the shifting blocks. This is taken from a crime prevention strategy, as my background is in criminology, and this is to do with the movement of stolen goods. You can see what is taken from the point of theft all the way to disposal, which in this case is the end consumer. All the blocks can shift based on the sort of species and how it's changing. The one at the bottom is an indicator for elephant ivory in Tanzania, which is where I'm from. The question is, how do we create one for plants? And that's exactly what the coalition is aiming to do. You may wonder why that's important, it's because when you start shifting these blocks around, you understand where exactly you can implement an approach, that mitigative approach, the crime prevention approach, but you need to understand the full supply chain to do so. We have a number of partners, and they are all very much dedicated to addressing this issue, because if I could truly make you understand the volumes that we're talking about here and the increase in the illegal plant trade, there is much reason for concern. We have our partners in South Africa who are discussing rehabilitation of communities that have previously engaged in poaching, how to create a safe space for cycads and succulents in South Africa. We have

horticultural relationships between Sandy and the National Botanic Gardens in Ireland. How can we get scientific understanding, propagation to go and speak to other areas and change and exchange information? We're talking about spectroradiometry. This is a non-invasive manner to establish province, where exactly the confiscated materials came from. This is so that we can help enforcement understand this plant was taken from X, Y, Z. At the same time, can we get the right paperwork to make this plant go back to where it came from? At the same time, we have people studying online trade. through the Huntington, how exactly people are trading on eBay, how exactly they're trading on other online platforms. Then, of course, we've got the ideas of applying animal wildlife strategies. Like I said, we're not reinventing the wheel. There are similarities with challenges that are specific to plants. And then, of course, we've got community engagement through all our partners. So, international collaboration with SANBI, and I'm sure Monica will talk about this a bit more, is how exactly we can go and help areas where capacity is needed. How do we help them do an inventory of exactly the plants confiscated? And we're talking about thousands and thousands of specimen, propagation, training, and collecting of seeds to make sure that we have an ex situ conservation strategy for them, as well as restoration. How do we take some of these plants back to the wild? We are also helping our partners, including SANBI, with red listing. How can we get these species listed so that more people are aware that this trade has to be stopped? We're working with our partners in Somalia because they do not have an infrastructure to rely on. They're working very heavily with a community that is dedicated to preserving the little wildlife they have left, especially in some of the war-torn areas. So we're talking about public education, empowerment, community-based surveillance. What exactly is moving on those small dhow boats? Where is it going? How much has it being paid for? And cooperation and referral. Especially with law enforcement, in a country that's dealing with law that was established during independence and has not been updated to address conservation in itself, the challenges in law are very vast. How do you work with other law experts who can come in, help organizations such as the Species Saviors Initiative to put the pressure on the country to instigate more law for conservation? Then we are working with our partners to see a list of priorities, because each country, each case, each plant is different. What is needed in one area is not always needed in another. And here we're talking about improving species identification, one of the biggest challenges when it comes to plants, building regional cooperation, law enforcement, and reducing economic vulnerability as key areas. So the coalition is a call to action. It's voluntary. There's a lot of people who are in this field who understand the way that the illegal plant trade has taken off. It's to understand all the way from the beginning of harvest to the end of the supply chain, what can be done while causing the campaign to think about, think twice and trade right on the type of plants that they're buying. So thank you very much for listening to me, and I hope this was of some help to some of you. Thank you.

Thank you all for a series of absolutely fascinating talks. We are now going to move on to a panel, so I would like to ask Dr. Monica Mowale and Nazli Demirel to come and join us at the front for the panel session. So firstly, I'm going to ask our new panelists to briefly introduce what they do before we move on to the questions. So Monica, if you would go first, please.

Hi, I'm Monica. I'm a researcher in forensic genetics. I work at SANBI. So the work I do is looking at illegal wildlife trade in terms of setting up species reference database to support enforcement and compliance. and also developing forensic genetic technologies to monitor and also illegal trade, legal trade as well, legal and illegal trade. Thank you.

Okay, hello, my name is Nazlı Demirel. I am a marine scientist in Istanbul University, mainly working on marine ecosystems, fishing impacts on the food web relation, and how we can better manage the ecosystem by ecosystem approach.

Thank you, Nazli. So firstly, I'm going to ask a series of individual questions before I ask some questions to the panel, and then we'll open it up to the room. So firstly, Anastasia, you mentioned the challenges in identifying when trade is legal and illegal. So how do you think we can better detect and counter misinformation and better understand when trade is legal and illegal, and how we can effectively intervene?

Right. I'll answer very, very kind of simply, and it's not comprehensive response, but I'll say the word traceability, because it means a lot of things as well. And maybe, you know, expanding on this, traceability means a lot of things to different people at a very basic level, it's about understanding how things are moving from point A to point Z, through all the other points in, say, supply chain. So if we think about, you know, products moving through the supply chains, it is about understanding, documenting transparently how those goods are transformed, how they are moving, what's happening to them, is there any mixing? Because this is where illegal products could be coming into the supply chains, for example, and that could be addressed through traceability. What comes with traceability, that's why it's a simple word with many additional points, of course, is good documentation. So paperwork is important. Is paperwork a paperwork or is it electronic? We see a lot of opportunities for petty corruption or bigger corruption with paper-based systems, much more opportunity for foolproof systems if it's electronic, although it's not probably completely foolproof. So I'll just say that maybe to.

Thank you. Monica, you helped pioneer new tools to understand the dimensions of trade. It would be great if you could tell us all a little bit about what those tools are and what they do, and what innovations you're most excited about now.

Okay, just to carry on in terms of traceability. So for CITES Appendix 1 listed species, things like cheat away, you've got exemptions, and you can trade in captive bird species. What we've done is do using SNP technology, do individualization profiling of individuals, and then we give them passports. So first of all, the breeders must prove that they have the parents. And then any offspring that's traded under CITES regulations gets a passport permit. So we do that for cheetahs, we do that for cranes, blue cranes, 'cause they're all listed under CITES. We are also doing that for parrots, African grey parrots and other species, including lion. And we also have captive breeders who breed tiger. So I think those tools In terms of South Africa's responding to illegal trade, I think it helps with monitoring, but it also helps to keep our captive bred industry legal. So when things are traded through the airports, we get a sub-sample, random samples that we use to confirm that that's a captive bred individual. And then the most exciting stuff is in terms of the succulents, we want to do individualization as well. So in terms of population and traceability, we want to know where these different populations of qualified terms are coming from, so that we have lots and lots in our gardens that maybe can support translocation, and in other ways, so we can put them back to where they've come, you know, and then protect those populations in the wild, and not have them in a botanical garden, like what we have now.

Relax me. In terms of the illegal plant trade, whilst the orchids are relatively well covered in CITES, other things fall through the gaps. How do you think we can do better in terms of detection and enforcement of regulations against plants? Because we know that, for example, with regards to things like the seahorse trade, even when regulations exist, people often don't see these groups as a priority.

Thank you, Alice. That's a really good question and definitely addresses some of the bigger challenges we're facing as well. I think one of the key areas is, i think there needs to be a recognition and enforcement in the entry points that there is a need for expertise in those areas. Perhaps someone with a plant background or a certain species that we know is trafficked to that area to be there assisting customs with identification. At the same time, I think it is more to do of Bringing this conversation out, making people aware that there is an actual trade in some of these species that do go undetected, I think it's a lot to do with the normalization of buying plants, the romanticization of it. Most of us have loads of plants at home. I myself too, but I couldn't tell you from today which one's legal or illegal myself, because just the amount of paperwork you have to go through, even CITES. So how do we take that, simplify it, so a layman who's just a consumer can easily detect whether what they have is right or wrong in their home. So it's helping consumers understand that. Thank you.

So now I have a question for both Kim and Nazli, being that you both work on elements of fisheries trade. Whilst we have longer term monitoring and more data within the sector, no data is perfect. What are some of the biggest challenges and gaps you see in monitoring elements of the fisheries sector and its impacts? And are there innovations in the space that are helping us overcome some of those challenges? Kim, do you want to go first?

I think we really need to recognize two things. Firstly, the investment that's gone in to collect the data that's often used to demonize fisheries is investments that the fisheries themselves have made. And we should try to celebrate people who have collected that data and recognize their investments. And try to encourage people to make as much of their data as transparent as possible by not just trying to pick holes in it, but also to point out the good that that's done in delivering conservation or delivering a signal that allows people to make decisions. And I think there is a slight imbalance between the people picking up the big stick and the people handing out the carrots. And I think most countries, when they see other countries being celebrated for what they've done right, would like to emulate that. That's a human trait, to like to be recognized for what you do. And I think there's an opportunity to look at the success we're having and to celebrate that as a signal to anyone who wants to invest that that would be something that they get recognized. If we go further down the line, we do have a range of regional fisheries management organizations that have been put together, recognizing that some fish stocks are highly migratory and they need to be managed on a global basis or on a regional basis. These organizations do not have the funds to run the opportunities that they're trying to deliver on. And I think if we're really interested in conservation, we have to pick up not just the protection of spaces from people, but invest in the people that are in those spaces to do the work that everyone wants to see done, including themselves. So sometimes what they call regional fisheries management organizations have staff, they have databases, they have data value chains where they're passing data all the way from the fishery up into a central office. Often there's not enough fuel in the tank to run those systems. So get beside them. Look at the opportunities to push that investment, not just into maybe stopping activities with fishing, but to make that more formalized, more recognized, and more valuable in making decisions to rebuild stocks, to recover stocks, but also where people are doing well to be celebrated. Thank you.

Okay, so first I would like to start with the FAO provide us a great data for fish catch since 50s, because every nation is reporting the fish catch to FAO, and when we look at the species specific catch, this is a great, and I think I can say for the marine realm, it is the most long-term and diverse data set that we have. This is important. When we look at those fish catch data, it is not only just looking at the sustainability or unsustainability of the stock, but also we can use other indices to understand the trends since 50s to now, I mean, for the 70 years. Like, for example, the marine trophic index, or fishing balance index, or what kind of big species were there, and we don't have now. So, for example, the marine trophic index shows us how we lose the big predators from the system, because the trend is generally reducing. The big predators are replaced by the lower trophic level fish species. So maybe they can be sustainable. I mean, today we can look at those low-trophic fish species that are sustainable, like anchovy, like sardine, they are not, but still, let's say, if they are sustainable, but we don't have the big predators around. So when the fish composition, catch composition, is considered, then we see the picture is changing dramatically and shifting the different species. And another thing is, we are losing also the large species, like reaching, growing up to the one meters or one and a half meters. Now we have smaller species around. So they can be unsustainable. They don't need to be unsustainable. They can be sustainable, but we should remember each species has their own function in the ecosystem. And the main relation is the food web relation. Some of them eating and some of them are eaten by others. Some of them are eating others. this relation is shifting also. So, ecosystem integrity is getting down, so we are losing the biodiversity in different ways. Maybe they are unsustainable, again, I'm saying, but we are different, we have different ecosystem and ecosystem is shifting in another way. So, Also, national reports are mainly considered by the industrial fisheries, the big fisheries. But there are subsistence fisheries, there are small-scale fisheries, there are some family fisheries. So we don't have too much data about them. So about the data accuracy for the fish catch, catch amount, we have some lost part, actually. And also, when we look at the discards that we are aiming to targeting fishing, but we are also catching the non-target one. And what are we doing them? Disposing to sea. They're just that. if maybe they can survive some of them. But so, we don't know the discard amounts exactly. There are some studies working on the fishing methods and how the one method can have discard values. So there are other initiatives rather than FAO. FAO provide a great data, but also rather other initiatives like Sea Around Us. Please check searounds.org. They are putting value to add these discard values and how those fishing methods can put another pressure on other fish or invertebrate species. So they are trying to provide a whole picture for the fish catch with targeted one, untargeted one, and also the subsistence, small scale, and industrial. family fisheries, something like that. So they're putting better pictures. So for the data accuracy, I can say you can check searoundus.org also.

Okay. So I briefly want to open it up to the floor so the panelists have a chance to answer your questions before I ask for closing words from the panelists. Renee.

Oh, gosh. My question is probably for Monica. She probably would, you know, for example, in a country like India, we have a lot of herbal medicines, a lot of ancient, supposedly ancient things, which are a mixture of many plants, lichens, fungi, a lot of stuff. We don't have estimates of the compositions, because herbal medicines go under the radar. So do you have any idea about how one would be able to identify and also quantify, and the provenance also of those supposedly herbal medicines?

So I'm going to ask for some other questions as well, so we can answer them together. Okay, I'm going to go around the room. So there's one here, one here, and one here. And if you're not by a microphone yet, please move to one. Okay, at the back here.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I come from South Africa, and I'm in the business of community resource rights. The most concerning part of all of it, while we understand all the important work being done by the different stakeholders who gave some of the talks here, we find that our local communities are the most affected in all of these things, because you can look at the fisheries, you can look at the wildlife species, you can look at the plants, And I always say, oh, let's say we know that most of these crimes are actually created by your most sophisticated people who knows, for example, in the plants and stuff like that. But we find when we have these discussions and solutions are found, it then affect the lowest people in the chain, which are your local communities. For example, I’ve picked up a point where we said the hunger of certain people have been now reversed. We know that people are getting hungry because of the restriction, for example, of just going to the sea and be able to fish. because of all the regulations that are flowing down. So I would like to ask all the experts here, and in all three categories, for example, to say, how do they take in account when they come up with the regulations that it's not adverse affecting the people at the lower end of the chain, if I can put it like that? Thank you.

Okay, we'll go over here.

Thank you. Zach Smith from the Natural Resources Defense Council. My question is about any developments in science and policy with respect to this data deficiency issue, because there's a real disconnect between the scale and scope of the challenge and future climate scenarios of a two degree world that suggests we don't have time for the perfect data. the data problems that have been identified across the board, by the time we figure those out, it'll be too late to fill those gaps. And so I'm curious about precautionary principles and using science to help inform the kinds of decisions we should be making now in anticipation of greater threats coming down in a context of lack of data. And maybe that's where we should have greater attention versus chasing data that could come too late. Thank you.

Thank you. And one last question here.

Thanks, Alice. My name's Max. I work for the European Bureau for Conservation and Development on fisheries and oceans issues. I've got two quickfire ones. Just to you, Alice, what's your take on incorporating socioeconomics and trade data into CITES listings proposals? And then maybe to Kim, There's a myriad of guidance and there was a call to maybe try to streamline and get a better overview of how these guides link together and what data exists, etc. Whether the five-dimensional sustainability assessment framework that Anastasia highlighted is being picked up in FAO in the fisheries world. Cheers.

So what I'm going to do is let us go down and therefore, because I'm sure people will have answers to multiple elements of them. So with regards to your comment there on including the social data, etc., within CITES, absolutely. I think the more data we have within those assessments, the better and the more nuanced they are, and they also help us understand the demand for and the drivers of trade, which ultimately help us make better decisions. I also think we need to look very closely at how we develop non-detriment findings, because often there are gaps there, and how easy it is to get a negative finding is a subject of huge amount of debate and how often we revisit that. Now, in the context of what data we have and how we use it to make decisions, at the moment, i think wildlife trade is the least well monitored target within the whole of the GBF because for the majority of species, we simply are not collecting the data we need to understand even what is in trade. The fact that our recent assessment more than doubled the number of species in use and trade shows how deficient our overall knowledge is, and that's even knowing what's in trade before gauging its impacts. What I would say is a national priority for most countries should be developing a system that combines using customs forms, which have the price of all the listings, with zoosanitary and phytosanitary certification. By developing something like that, we could very quickly start to catalogue what's in trade, a system like LEMIS, which would then allow us to develop targeted tools to look at Actually, I'm importing much more of the species than I thought. Maybe I need to assess the sustainability as well as assessing disease risks and detecting laundering when animals are listed at prices far above the average for that species. So in terms of our ability to act, often if you go to a CITES meeting, the listing of species is challenged because it's said that there is not sufficient data to prove that trade poses a risk. But the data needed to prove trade is a risk is only available after listing, and so I do think it's urgent to start collecting that data, because for many species we do not have a baseline. At the same time, there are certain groups that have traits that make them vulnerable to trade. Things like cave geckos, which are vastly popular for the pet trade, but currently get listed one by one, meaning we are always chasing a problem that already exists, rather than stopping a problem from happening. When species are in high demand or have traits that make them vulnerable to over-collection, we should be proactively either developing surveys to assess if that's the case, or listing them based on the precautionary principle. But at the moment, we have a system where regulation lags behind issues, meaning that populations may already be on the brink before trade is noted to be at risk. Okay, I'll pass the microphone over to Monica.

All right, thank you. I will respond to Renee. In terms of mixed species, we had a project in South Africa where we looked at our traditional markets, and it's true, most of traditional medicines are mixtures. So what we are doing is a two-pronged approach. I think the first thing is, we actually don't have a reference database for almost all of our species. So we have not yet even defined how to distinguish them as species using, you know, plant DNA is very complicated. So we're using then, so we're setting up a reference database for traditional medicine. And then in terms of approach, we're using metabarcoding, new genomic technology, which we can make with mixed samples to identify the different elements within those samples, also using things like qPCR assays to identify the species that are being traded. We're using these techniques also for meat, for meat fraud casework, where we have people selling mixed samples. So for meat authentication, that's how, that's where we started. And then we thought we could apply this to plants as well, medicinal products, yes, but in terms of age and that, and provenance, Until we get a reference database, I think, yeah, we're not able to trace them. But then I'll just respond to my South African colleague. I think, yes, managing wildlife, sustainable use. involves community, local government, people, and I think the decisions we make have major implications, especially where people's livelihoods are dependent on the species that we would like to manage. And I think we always do try to have a principle where we involve the communities, and the government involves different local government at different management levels in terms of involving them in the trade, where if trade is allowed, and then also giving them access to the resource. In SANBI, we have lots of projects where we train communities to propagate, even for plant species that they're interested in for medicinal purposes, so we involve them. It's a very complex, as you know, dealing with communities and people, but an industry with different needs, but yes, I think we're trying to get there, but yes, it's a very tough ask.

Thank you. Just a quick round on some questions. I'll pick on the herbal medicines ones. I'm a co-chair of the IUCN Medicinal Plant Specialist Group, so happy to have a chat about things as well. And we have a side event tomorrow, nice plug, focusing on medicinal plants trade at 6:15. So please come, have a look. But, you know, some simple answers, you know, supporting fully what Monica is saying, the methods exist, there are ways to understand what's inside the products. You know, there is just an excuse if people are not doing authentication as available, labs are available for any products. Also, maybe a shout out, Royal Botanic Garden Kew has something they call Medicinal Plant Name Services, and they work very closely, for example, with India authorities to kind of have a very, very clear understanding of synonyms of species and what is being used. because it's about safety as much as sustainability and health, right? So, but yeah, very happy to connect as well. On the, I just wanted to say rights-based approaches and understanding the role of people, and I think, you know, I think Maybe this panel, I think we always say this, this panels need to change, the panels need to include people speaking from different perspectives, so maybe I will just call on ourselves to also be a lot more inclusive about representation. But I think you're exactly right. I think understanding what and why is happening on the ground, people living with wildlife, people using wildlife, is critical for this complex picture to be sustainable. I really like the question about data deficiency versus do we not know really what we're doing? And I think maybe two sides. I think a lot of this conversation here in this session about measuring is because we sit in the context of the CBD and the indicators, and we know it is imperfect, but it is particularly bad for this target. So I think the intention here is just to try and understand what else can be done to bring, but I agree with you, and managing what we are measuring is always true, and getting political attention to an issue if you do not have any data is extremely difficult. But you are right as well that this is not a new issue, there is so much knowledge about what works and does not and where the precautions need to sit, so there is no excuse not to act. And I think governments nationally often do that and know our stakeholders, but more should be done. This is a critical issue, species are disappearing, so affecting everything else. Thank you.

Thanks for the questions. I listed about five questions there, so I'm just going to try and run through them quickly. Just to think about medicines, don't forget that marine species are quite big in the medicines, be they sea cucumbers or seahorses and many of the other elements. So I think not just plants, but also keeping an eye on that. For community resource rights, the right to food and livelihoods, this is really trying to get the balance right so that We end up with not just making sure that we got a planet we want to live in, but the people that are living in it aren't marginalized. And I think one of the reasons to do that is quite selfish, too. We don't, and we will never handle the problems we've got with projects alone. Projects run for two to three to five years. It's the people in the environment that will offer the robust long-term practice. And without them on side, We're never going to be able to deliver these problems with two, three-year projects and small amounts of funding, which often is largely eaten up not by the people themselves, but by the planning or delivery of the project. For the questions about the precautionary principle, I would recommend you to think not so much about the precautionary principle, but it's a precautionary approach in that these are renewable species. We're not talking about mining and losing on persistent chemicals. I believe we have to think about these things quite carefully about decisions and trade-offs, because most of us don't have budgets to do the kinds of work we would want to do. And therefore, we need to inform our action. We can't just go in blind because someone said that's where we should go. And Alice mentioned, we aren't necessarily taking on board because we don't have enough data in CITES. Well, I just want to put that straight, because in the last two CITES COPs, By far the majority of species proposed, 99% of aquatic species, got listed. In other words, got adopted straight into the appendices, often without data. And this includes a large suite of lookalike species, which don't have any conservation concern at all. somewhat gums up the system, because now we have CITES and the fisheries departments filling out paperwork for species of no conservation concern from the perspective of extinction. And that's a nice to have, but we've actually got real problems, and we need to focus on the biggest problems we've got. We don't need to wait for data, but we need to make sure that we are working on what we should be rather than what we advocate to work on. And this speaks to the socio-economics in CITES. Socio-economics in CITES shouldn't be used as an excuse for not doing action on a species that needs it, but it also needs to take into account, are we likely to be successful in using the CITES toolkit to extend our action? for that particular species groups, because sometimes, okay, last one, the five dimensional framework, that's just another description of ecosystem approach, taking a broader view than just looking at the species or one element at a time. Thank you.

Thank you. Do I have time to go around quick? All right. Just on the question of NDFs. BGCI actually works on a project funded by Darwin, and we're working with partners in Kanyagabon in Madagascar. And with timbers, we're actually finding a lot of data is available in country. It's just that the right points don't have access to it. So we're actually working on an approach, which is a three-step approach, to ensure that you're not doubling up the work. So we're getting the partners on the ground who are actually there to get that information, go speak to the communities, get the right information as well. But I can share more information on that approach for NDS and data collection with you after. Regarding the question of running out of time, I'm in complete agreement with that. I think thinking outside the box for some of this, especially when we're dealing with the illegal plant trade. As a criminologist, there are situations where you can look at situational crime prevention, horizon scanning, because this idea of poaching is a behavior one. And this is something that has been going on for generations. Like you said, we're running out of time. How can we think outside the box with situational crime prevention where we can mitigate the rates of poaching and illegal harvest enough so that the species, the specimens, can remain sustainable? So there are certain approaches like that that through the coalition we are exploring, because like you said, waiting for data, we are running out of time. But on that double-edged sword, we are at the time of AI, so things could progress a lot faster, hopefully, as well. For communities, I think a lot of our projects are working very much, as my colleague mentioned, with propagation. I think there is a definite need for benefit sharing there, especially when species and resources are taken when leaving communities there, and this is something that BGCI aims to address in majority and all of its projects. Thank you.

I'm okay.

Okay, thank you all for staying with us. I think we can all agree it's been a fantastic round-the-world session across tax on trade. This is something that needs to resound more within the CBD. It is one of the pillars and we do not talk about it enough. We are starting to collect the data and develop priorities. But it's still falling through the gaps, and there are still major gaps, particularly for some of the more neglected and smaller taxa, and we need to do better to protect all species in trade. So with that, I'd like to thank our fantastic panel, and then we're going to transition straight away to yet another one. Thank you all. So, for those of you who have been sitting with us for the last hour and however much, there should be refreshments outside. The next session we will start straight away. So if the moderator, Isabella, can come here, and all of the panelists, if you just sit nearby because we have a very busy session. Don't worry, you can go. Everything's already there, so. Can you put it back on? It's ready. Everything is set, we just need it back on. Everything's here already.

I want to change.

Okay. Yeah, and they're all numbered and everything's there. You safe journeys. Enjoy your Turkish dinner or whatever tonight.

It's one slide, but With second place. I check it.

Hi, I'm Tara. Nice to meet you. Carly's not here, but I have Raquel joining me as my other speaker.

Fantastic. And then we need it up straight away because we're going to start. Okay? Thank you. Great question. And if you want to touch base later. Fantastic. It doesn't really matter. Yes, everything will be there. We have a control. Everything's uploaded. Yeah, they'll be on that screen. Yep, taxi. We have a big group. Okay, we'll be starting in a minute. They decided they wanted to do it a slightly different way. We'll just leave it there. It makes it easier for us. Okay, can you put things straight up? Okay. Yep, everything is here. So someone has the slide clicker. Can we pass that over here? Stephanie, how do you begin? Okay, it might be easier if people sit in the order they are on the slide. It might be easier if people sit, never mind, we've got the clicker. Okay.

Yeah.

But never mind, because otherwise we have to pass this back and forth. You don't need this. It doesn't matter, we just need to start, it's okay. Okay, you. Yeah, I know. Okay. Because someone is co-presenting with someone. It's fine, don't worry. Okay. Where is Tara? There you are. You're the first. Okay. You can make a start.

So, good afternoon, everyone, and nice to see you all for this last session of the day. So, today we'll focus on using data to guide action. So, yesterday we had a session on indicators already, but today we will mainly focus on how monitor these indicators, data can help us to make decisions, and how we use this data to guide action. So, we will get an overview of various strategy tools developed by a great diversity of institutions, from botanical gardens to UN institutions, for example. And we will hear six presentations on several approaches, growing from plant conservation, fungi, genetic diversity, or maintained ecosystems. So speakers will also introduce how these strategies and tools can support the implementation of the CAMG-BF. And then we'll have 30 minutes question panel discussion, so if you want to, please note your question as we go, and then we will start. So I will give the floor to Alice to introduce all the speakers.

Thank you. We've tried to cover as many dimensions of the biosphere as possible here. May not have time for many questions, but hopefully you can find all of our esteemed speakers later. So the first speaker for today is Tara Montreux, who will be telling us more about how we can monitor plants. Over to you, Tara.

Hi. Hello. There we go. Do I press this to go?

Let me just upload it for you.

Thank you. While the slides come up, I just wanted to say thank you to the organizers of the Science Policy Forum. I had the privilege of attending the forum in Cali, in Colombia, and just found it to be such a rich dialogue and really important as we all learn how to bridge this gap between science and policy. So I'm going to speak with my colleague Raquel from Plantlife, and we're going to talk a little bit about how botanical institutions are nexus networks, really trying to mobilize data to action. So can I get a show of hands of people who are familiar with the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation? Oh, excellent. So I'm hoping that by the end of this presentation, you will all put your hands up and say, I'm familiar with the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Our key messages that we wanted to share with you today is that botanical institutions are established networks working across the world on research, education, and conservation. The global strategy for plant conservation is a really important framework for advancing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. And important plant areas and spatial planning tools for First Nations and local governments are key tools for transformative change. So botanic gardens, there's many of us. We are distributed around the world. close to 40,000 botanic gardens exists. We serve one billion visitors per year and have a broad array of experts working in data collection, taxonomy, education, finance, marketing, a really powerful network. The history of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation is long. Next year, it will be 25 years that it was adopted at COP6 and is a really important framework in Cali at COP16. The newer version was adopted by the parties. So it's a very important document, and we've been working towards developing indicators for parties to report out on their plant conservation activities. A number of us met. Botanic Gardens, the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation, stewards the global strategy for plant conservation. And I wanted to demonstrate here that there is a lot of work already underway at botanic gardens across all of the GBF targets. I want to talk a little bit about the lands that I come from. I work at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and I wanted to bring a little bit of context to an example and a case study of a bioregional atlas that we have been developing in collaboration with our community partners for the last number of years. The UBC Botanical Garden, it's a university botanic garden. So I think that that's a really unique opportunity. We are both a botanic garden with a living plant collections database, but part of a university in Canada. We're Canada's oldest university botanic garden, and our garden operates in the Faculty of Science. One of the really important things that I have learned as a settler in Vancouver is that We are understanding what it means to have truth and reconciliation in working on the lands that we are on. The UBC Botanical Garden grows on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, the Halkomelem speaking people. This is a really important part of the work that we're doing. Across British Columbia, there are 200 First Nations. When I say unceded, it means that no territories have been signed with our First Nations, which makes governance and management very complicated in a land that is very also ecologically diverse. So I've been at the garden for about 12 years, and working under this framework, I lead our research and education programs, trying to take policy-aligned programs. How do we work from local to global levels? And what I wanted to highlight was a mapping tool, a place where we've been compiling data from across the province to create a tool for our local and First Nation planners. So this Biodiversity Atlas, we launched our beta version last April. This was after many years of deep listening circles and understanding and working with local government and First Nation planners to understand how can they, what tools do they need to better integrate biodiversity into their community planning and their long-term policy decisions. So you can access our tool, the Action for Adaptation Biodiversity Atlas, and it's really serving a region in the southwest coast of BC. We do this work in collaboration with a group called the Coastal Douglas Fir Conservation Partnership, which is a conservation network bringing together many different conservation players. What we heard in our first two years of developing this atlas in listening and interviews with planners was that there was a need for many different types of layers: land cover mapping, understanding environmentally sensitive areas, species at risk, ecosystem connectivity, above-ground carbon, And what that led to was, this is one of the layers that we've been compiling, and this is the example I wanted to highlight where we were aggregating data from multiple sources, maps from many different places, to bring it together understand what does environmentally sensitive areas in our region look like. The interesting thing I want to highlight here is we've also been exploring the concept of climate micro refugia, trying to understand in the future, in a changed climate, what current ecosystems will persist and where will they be, which is a really important part when our local governments and First Nation planners are wanting to think about connectivity, where can they be identifying places where ecological connectivity will persist. So I wanted to sort of wrap up in thinking about our barriers, gaps, and challenges. So we're really challenged. It's taken me way longer to do this atlas than I ever thought. It's about integrating data from across these sources, cleaning data. We're also trying to respond to this urgency of climate change and land use change. And our study area consists of our province's 75% of our province's population. We also address and have to look at that 80% of the land is privately owned. This is very difficult when trying to do planning for biodiversity. Our recommendations and solutions is we're working to add important plant areas, and Raquel's going to talk a little bit about that. also about continuing to work with our First Nations and local governments to improve and refine the tool. And we want to, what we're doing is linking the tool to policy language to support planners, many of whom are not ecologists, do not have a background in biology, so that we can support bringing language that supports biodiversity into their plans. And also, it's here this week, I'm amazed at all the spatial planning tools that exist from a global down to a very local level. How do we connect to these others spatial planning tools. This work is not done in a silo. We are funded by government, by individual donors, and a group called the BC Conservation Fund. So I'm going to pass it to Raquel, who's going to talk about important plant areas.

Thank you very much for everybody that came here today and for the opportunity to speak and also to dialogue with those projects that are happening and could be correspondent with our important plant areas like in global scale. So just to a bit of context from Plant Life International, and Plant Life is the voice of wild plant and fungi since 1989. And Plant Life launched the important plant areas in 2001, inspired by the important bird areas. Most of you have been hearing things about the K So it's more or less, but for those that are not familiar, that is a similar approach. And this, we initiate that network. to advocate as like a whole society approach. And then each year we have more countries, we have around 50 countries and more than 2,500 sites. But it's really process from led by communities and countries and scientists and local NGOs. So it's an effort that are not effort directly from plant life, but the other people like Tara being doing to collect data, to connect with nations and everything. So what's the IPA? IPA is the important, is the areas, try to identify areas to protect the best sites for plant conservation in the world, but is applicable nationally or locally. So it's a criterion-based evaluation system. Each criterion has sub-criterion, and it's basing percentage of wards or national population of threatened species or habitat that is presented within that IPA sites. A site must take at least one sub-criterion to qualify for IBA, and you can use the information that is already available for your country, like if you have national assessments or if you have any data from useful species, this can be the first step to do a more comprehensive application of the criterion. So the network of sites, they are based on the complementarity and connectivity, and it focus also in replaceability, that is, some sites are unique for some species in national or in global scale, and sites of exceptional risk, richness and ecosystem service, for example, useful plants, and also habitats. So the three criteria I treat in species, botanical richness, including use of species and treated habitat. And here is some publication that is the base of the of the program. So just to see the kind of data we use, I already mentioned for threatened species, we use global red list, but also national red list. We use on-site inventories, species-rich mapping, and also the mapping for useful species, crop wild relatives, medicine species, and then for threatened habitats, vegetation mapping, and also threat mapping or ecosystem red list. In this program, we have like a set umbrella of research activities, but also we have opportunities for plant taxonomy and inclusion of traditional knowledge. And I think it's good we are complementing here because it's the local partners that has this approach, has the connection with the people of the country, and can do the best job because they understand the context, the local So just like a overview about this countries we have IPAs, some, the three countries that British Virgin Island, Turks and Caicos Islands, they are small and they are already like passing the 30% in areas of IPAs. Bolivia is a bigger country and it is impressive that the efforts is more than 30% of the area, but also like 70% of the endemic species are protected. and more than 90% of useful species were listed, like around 3,000 species. But it doesn't mean that the countries has to do all the area approach to complete the treaty only with IPAs, but it can really be complementary to other approach, like KBA, IBA, and other groups. And just the case of Sierra Leone, they just published in October their report with 23 species, and it's 30% of the land, but they They have 78% of endemic species in those sites. So we are really conserving plant species, plant diversity in IPA. And if you want to see more, there is the QR code. But it shows that how the IPA can overlap with other initiatives or spatial planning, like the protected area system, the OACMs, and then even KBA and other approach. And just to show, I mean, here, they are celebrating the 10 years of IPAs in the country. They are working to update these sites now. And there is much more information than when they start the program. And you can see that many, many IPAs are also local sites for like a biosphere sites or also protected area. And this is like, again, with Tara did. So, the barriers, I think, is like global data integration, integration into national policies and NBSAPs, and more synergy between this other area-based approach or other tools like the Atlas. So, I think the most important message is, if you already done a very great efforts to gather data, to communicate with local communities, this effort can be, you can just use this to do a correspondence with IPA criterion to have a global representations. And some recommendations, like institutional recognitions like country is important, still management of those areas in long term as well, more capacity to connect with indigenous people and local communities and discuss how it's going to work the traditional knowledge data governance and operationalization, how we integrate with other groups or other area-based, and for sure long-term funding because all the roundtables are discussing this. We cannot do conservation with small grants, and when the population are living there and then they engage with all those programs, but with their own land. Thank you.

Thank you.

So, can you pass the controller?

So we're going to move from looking at plant conservation around the world to our next presentation, where we will have Dr. Nirmala, who will be from the NMHN, who will be introducing us to Bob.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction. So as you can see, the National Museum of Natural History of France is celebrating 400 years anniversary this year. And I will present now to you some of the data services that we are developing for businesses and land planning. So, well, just quickly, we'll share what the issue is, go through two examples, and have take home messages. So what is the issue? Actually, a lot of data is available, but now imagine that you are a land planner or a business developer who is looking to develop activities within a territory. And you go to, say, GBIF France, and there are a lot of data, and you can pull like list of species per site, but how to make any sense of this? So we thought, we have to take the data that is already there and develop digital services that accommodate this data under new indicators that directly speak to someone who is not a biodiversity expert. And this, in turn, we hope, will help all these actors to have more sustainable practices to avoid impacts on biodiversity and better conciliate biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic activities. So the museum, we're happy to have botanical gardens like our previous colleagues, but also a French thing, we like to have French specificities. which are national botanic conservatories, whose main missions are to collect knowledge on plant, fungi, and habitats, and also to help conservation of all these features. And so they collect data and publish this data, in particular on species occurrence. So within the museum,

We have the conservatory for the Paris basin. So you see basically a map here, but I could show you. So we have teams on the grounds collecting data and publishing this data on a dedicated website. But what you can do now is pull out a map and you say, show me on this territory where we have at least one protected species. And this is tremendously important to someone who is trying to install new activities, because if there is protected species, then you would have to go through a derogation process. It's costly, it's longer, it can be attacked in court and so on, so it's a risk. So you can look at this, but we also have other filters, like which are the threatened species or the near threatened species at regional level, at national level, on our red list. which are the wetland species, because wetlands are protected, or they have some form of protection, but we do not always know where are the wetlands. So knowing that there are species there can help you. And also, eU listed IAS. So it's an open website where everyone can go and play with the filters and so on. So the next example is under development yet, so it cannot be accessed. I have to tell you that last year we suffered a very bad cyber attack, and that has put us very much behind in several of these developments and in our national information system. So this one is the biodiversity toolkit, or Boite a Outils Biodiversite, which we sum up as BOB. And so here you can, the idea is that The stakeholder inputs a shapefile or group of shapefiles of the sites where they have interests, maybe it's sites they own already or that they plan to acquire. And then Bob will go into all our public databases. There is nothing new or nothing secret, and it's the databases on what we know are where are the species, where are the natural habitats, including the ones that are protected by the EU, where are the protected areas, under what status, et cetera. And then it will prepare a personal dashboard with maps, indicators, et cetera, that will show you, well, the first thing we are working on are protected and threatened species and protected areas, but we want also to extend to natural habitats, connectivity, and pressures. And so I must also say that we are doing this in partnership with the French Biodiversity Agency, and it's supported by private funders. And so, this is the sort of outputs, sorry, that Bub will give you. So here you have on the right, the map that shows that the site is really at the center of the map. And then we create buffer zones because obviously what happens outside of the site is also important. Some species are mobile, for example. So it's not because you do not see them there that they cannot come. And here you see the different protected areas and their status, their legal status, around this site. And you also have dashboards that show you the number of species present with their different levels of Red List status, and it can also be classified by taxa. And the idea is to have a web browser to access this, but also API, so that In time, this service can be pulled into other web portals or other software. So to summarize, to make this work, well, first we need strong data collection schemes because we can make all the nice digital tools, maps, and indicators that we like. If we do not have data from the field, they're useless. But it's also important to elaborate and maintain reference lists to cross with species occurrence, which are the protected species, which are the threatened species, where are the protected areas, etc., etc. So all this is important sort of invisible work, but it is not Enough, even if we share this, which we already do, it's not readily accessible to many actors and stakeholders, and so we have to really work with them and take into account their needs to develop targeted services for them. So thank you for this.

Thank you, Nirmala, for a fascinating talk and really highlighting the need and the ability to make that data more available and digestible. You also highlighted the need for on-the-ground data, so our next speaker will tell us about an indicator that very much requires on-the-ground data and also speaks to one of the headline indicators. So I'm very happy to welcome Dr. Alicia Mastrata-Llanes from Kew Gardens to the stage to tell us about the work of the Coalition of Conservation Genetics and some of the crucial work they've been doing on practicable and usable indicators. Over to you, Alicia.

Thank you, fellow Alice. And welcome, everyone, and thank you for the invitation of being here. So this is supposed to do something? Not yet. OK, waiting. Excellent. So today, I would like to pretty much tell a story of how we develop the genetic diversity indicators that, as Alice mentioned, made it to target four of the global biodiversity, global framework. I should know this, right? Global biodiversity framework. As you mentioned, I'm currently based at Kew Gardens, but here I am also representing the Coalition for Conservation Genetics. We are a network of scientific networks that you can see below that are related to genetic diversity. So I would like to start by reminding us that humanity already learned the hard way the importance of genetic diversity. You might be familiar with the pathogen that infected potatoes in Europe, causing very important famines in the 19th century. Also, I really like this extract from a US document after a very bad economic loss caused by a pathogen in maize, saying, "Never again should a major cultivated species be molded into such uniformity that it is so universally vulnerable to attack by a pathogen and insect or environmental stress." And this is from the '70s. For this reason, the Aichi targets already first focus on species important for agriculture. We're talking about 2010, after the Convention of Biological Diversity started in 1992, recognizing genetic diversity as one of the three elements of biodiversity. However, even if we already know the importance of genetic diversity for agriculture, the rest of the species, that means all of the wild species upon which ecosystems depend, were overlooked. Linda Leakey, one of my personal heroes from the University of Stockholm in Sweden, wrote this fantastic paper in 2008 already stating this. And she already was present at different COPS, I believe this is in 2010, already mentioning the importance of genetic diversity and trying to design targets that were included. However, this was not successful because genetic diversity is seen as something very hard, difficult, and expensive. What we did for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework with the herding abilities of Sean Hoban from Morton Arboretum. Yes, this is where my colleague takes a picture. Excellent. There he is. He had the idea of, instead of having all these separated efforts, to actually join the effort into a single common message that we could present at parties during the CBD negotiations. And this is what the Coalition for Conservation Genetics is, a network of scientific networks working together to streamline the messages on genetic diversity. So this is not new. As I mentioned, Linda Lightly had already been doing this when I was getting busy being born, and then there was many other people doing fantastic efforts that you can see in this timeline. All for that, to that specific moment in 2020 when the zero draft of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework was being discussed. So what we did, once we realized that it was a great idea to go together, was to have a collective effort to push for the inclusion of genetic diversity indicators during COP15. I'm just having a picture here of the people that were involved there. You can see their names in bold in the first row. But this was a huge effort of many, many people from more than 10 countries. And I would like to highlight the efforts of Mike Brufort, who was very sick at the time, and he made a great effort. So I want to highlight what collective effort means. It means that we had a lot of Zoom calls in all of the time zones that you can imagine. Thank you, fellow allies, for your efforts. You're included there. It also means that we had scientific publications specifically addressing this conversation. We targeted outreach materials in a language that was accessible for policymakers. We interacted directly with the CBD Secretariat with webinars. Actually, I met the people that I'm talking about during a webinar. We proposed specific indicators And we attended COP15 with a booth, with training materials that were again accessible for the specific needs needed in that moment. We had a side event that was translated into four languages where we explained the indicators that we were proposing, and we attended a lot of negotiations to clarify doubts from the scientific perspective and to find a balance between the needs of the parties and the scientific basis of studying genetic diversity. For these reasons, I'm very happy to say that the Global Biodiversity Framework raised the bar for genetic diversity, and as you know, it is explicitly mentioned in Goal A and Target 4. As you can see in Target 4, I highlight "within" and "between". I remember when these words were in brackets during the negotiations, and I was like shaking, because it's not grammar. "Within" and "between" has a scientific meaning. Let's remember that genetic diversity are the differences among individuals and populations within a species and between populations. So why would we focus at the population level? First of all, because when we talk about within populations, we are talking about differences among individuals that are in that population. And when we talk about between populations, we are talking about different populations, maybe in different environmental zones or maybe isolated from each other. So therefore, populations is where evolution happens. Second, populations inhabit an area that is managed or owned by people, or where businesses have an interest. So it's a direct link to the territory. And third, people are the ones managing and conserving populations, rarely the entire species. So it has a direct conservation action. And I would like to highlight that this is true for both wild and domesticated species of all sorts, that then go and form ecosystems, again, of all sorts. It doesn't matter if they are aquatic, terrestrial, wild, or agroecosystems. And yes, this also involves fungi, even if I am a very bad person and I didn't draw one there. But there is one in the other drawings. You can see it on the top. So what the idea that we had, and this was the bright idea of Linda Leakey originally, was to focus on the main threats to genetic diversity. First, asking a very simple question. Are we maintaining the different adaptations, the different adaptive traits that occur in different populations? Because whenever our populations get extinct, we lose whatever genetic diversity that was there. I don't need to sequence all of the individuals there to know it. This is what we call the complementary indicator proportion of populations maintained within a species, which made it as complementary indicator for target 4. And then we ask another fundamental question. Are populations large enough to sustain genetic diversity? This comes from population genetics theory, because we know that when populations are large enough and have an effective population size above 500, they do not lose genetic diversity as fast as smaller populations. This made it into the headline indicator A4, proportion of populations with ten species with an effective population size any above 500. Let me go back to the point. So when we talk about effective population size and we say about 500, it's not because it's a magic threshold. It's because below this number, just by genetic drift, that is by random processes occurring in populations, populations start to lose genetic diversity. So this is Pure science coming from population genetic theory and empirical research, showing that the smaller populations are, the quickly they lose genetic diversity going forward. Below that, much smaller population sizes could start to become inbreeding problems. But at this rate, we're talking about keeping adaptive potential going forward. So in a nutshell, you can think of effective population size as a genetically relevant size of a population. And specifically, I want to highlight that this is not census size, but a genetic term. It is related, however, to the census size of a number of mature individuals, because around 10% of the effective population size, around 10% of the census size is the effective population size, which takes me to how to estimate the effective population size. You can do it in two ways. If we have genetic data, and this is especially true for weird things like fungi, you can have DNA sequencing, and then there are bioinformatic methods to calculate effective population size. But if you don't have genetic data, which is what happens in the majority of the world, then we can use this ratio that I mentioned earlier, where for many species, it is around 10% of the census size of mature individuals that are actively reproducing. So if we have good ground-based population data, we are able to estimate approximately the effective population size. We arrived to COP15 showing that this was feasible by actually doing it. At the time, I was at the Mexican institution, CONABIO, and I met Jessica da Silva from Sambi. So together, we organized a group of scientists and practitioners from all of these institutions from nine countries, and aimed to arrive to COP15 having assessed around 50 to 100 species by country. Eventually, this made it into this publication that we call the nine country paper. So in the nine country paper, we found that for around 900 species that we were able to assess in very few months, and around 5,000 populations, the majority of the populations were too small to be able to sustain genetic diversity. In other words, we have shown that we were losing genetic diversity. So we translate what we learned doing this pilot with nine countries into guidelines that are currently being uploaded by other project, and we continue to work with countries from other regions, not originally in the nine country paper. These guidelines include also a web tool to collect data that is the same one that we use to organize ourselves and that we believe could be useful for others. And I want to highlight here that sometimes we might not have accurate, exact number of individuals in a particular region, but we could know if there are more than 5,000, because there are thousands and thousands, or there are few hundreds. And that key information that in many cases local people already have, I'm talking about park rangers or landowners, local communities, park managers, they already can know the amount of individuals that there are in these rough numbers. estimate the genetic diversity indicators. So more recently, again led by Jessica da Silva, who you might have realized is a force of nature, she helped to coordinate an effort with a lot of colleagues from Ginoah, one of the networks of the coalition, to assess how countries have reported on genetic diversity now that the headline indicator had been adopted. And my colleagues over there, can you make a noise? Yes, they have some policy briefs, or you can go to this QR code to see the results of this. But in a nutshell, we found that a lot of parties are already including genetic diversity as part of their national targets. Only 23 reported on the A4 indicator. But to be honest, I'm impressed that we achieved this considering that we are talking about a very new term that includes population genetic theory on it. We're also developing other tools, so here I'm going to include an ad for a side event that we will have tomorrow, where we want to check if we can use Earth observation data to stream monitoring after we already have ground data on densities. So with that, I would like to thank you, including also the people who were behind this but could not be present. We also have a boot downstairs, the electric stairs. Look for the chameleon. You will find us. And again, I hope that this was a good example of how policy and science can work together to provide indicators that are based on scientific research. Thank you very much.

And thank you, alicia, for telling us about the importance of measuring genetic diversity, a reminder that it is another pillar and a metric of diversity according to the CBD. Now, because we had so many insults to fungi there and so much neglect, we're going to go on to the global fungal strategy and this neglected but critically important group of organisms. So with that, I'd like to welcome Katja to the stage. Over to you.

Thank you. Just to say, I'm here talking. But I'm representing a large network of mycologists and practitioners, the Global Fungal Conservation Network, particularly my co-leaders, Greg Mueller and Rachel Hoffman. And we have a number of different members of the network here today as well. Should I do something, or will the presentation come up? Sorry. And we also have a booth next to the genetic, the Coalition on Genetic Diversity. So do visit our booth as well. They are fun. We're the most fun booth. If you weren't here last week and you didn't go to our event, yeah, we're the most fun booth. Yeah. OK. Well, hopefully, I'll just continue, and then I'll go through the slides. Sorry, I didn't want it to be, to lose the formatting. Oh, okay. How will this work? How will I scroll down? Okay. Can you just put, if you put big and then I can, yeah, put the actual page. I need my notes. I'm sorry, what a mess. Okay. How is this? Yeah, but okay. It's fine. Okay, so hopefully you've been to the booth, you all know why fungi are important, so I'm going to skip through that. I just want to highlight some numbers to talk--to demonstrate the scale we're talking about. So we have just over 150,000 species described, but we estimate that there are actually 2.5 million. So that means under 10% of fungi Fungal species have been described. The rest, we don't even know their names. And from those 10% that have been described, under 1% have had their extinction risk assessment published in the IUCN Red List. But we know from the species that have been assessed that over 30% are threatened. So there used to be a perception that fungi were not threatened, which is not true. They face the same threats as plants and animals. And despite their importance and despite us knowing that they are threatened. They have not, or largely they've been missing from conservation policy and action. But things are changing through genetic tools and community science. We're finally gathering the data we need to bring fungi into those fora. So we just launched next week the first global strategy for fungal conservation, largely inspired by the plant strategy. And although this is an effort that started Decades ago, I want to recognize it's not something that we did now. It's something that has been building up through the years. It was after the last plan strategy got. approved, then fungi again were left out, that we thought, okay, we just need to go ahead and have a strategy for fungi. So we took it to the International Mycological Congress in 2024 and asked the mycological community, is this something we should do? Do you want this? And it was unanimous that, yes, we should have a strategy for fungi. At the last COP, we took a brief where we identified the key targets of the GBF for which fungi are particularly essential. So when we're talking about halting extinction, how can we ignore a whole kingdom of life? When we talk about restoration, how can we ignore the soil fungi and other key fungi that are essential to maintain ecosystems, et cetera? And we went through a drafting process over a year with 73 people from 30 countries. We opened for public consultation last May, and we just launched last week in the very special Armenian pavilion. So what's the strategy? As I said, it's the first dedicated global framework for fungal conservation. It's voluntary, the same as the plant strategy. It's a set of voluntary actions that not only countries, but organizations can, and I would say should take to for effective nature conservation. It's aligned with the GBF, and it's made to fit existing frameworks. This strategy basically asks for fungi to be considered in our decisions around nature conservation. It's voluntary, we try to fit within the GBF, so we're not adding additional burden to countries. We recognize governments are already overstretched, and the idea, it's all about integration. Again, we can't do nature conservation without fungi, and we can't do fungal conservation without the other groups as well. So it's really about this integration of The whole ecosystem, the relationships between the species, but also existing mechanisms. And, sorry, just making sure I don't miss my notes. We don't need perfect data. I think that's the key. We have enough to act. As I said, the document fits within the GBF. We identified the 12 key targets. That's all of targets related to reducing threats to nature, meeting people needs, targets 9 to 11. And we recognize from the tools and solutions, all of them are important to implement the strategy, of course, the same way they are important to implement the GBF. But target 20 is particularly important around cooperation and capacity building. So for each of the targets, we identify the actions that can be done within existing policy and practice, and the research and infrastructure priorities that need to be developed to enable those actions. Again, we recognize there are still large knowledge gaps around fungal conservation, but they run in parallel. I'll go through that in another slide. We also have an annex with a list of examples of fungal conservation in practice and existing tools and resources to support implementation. And the case studies really provide the evidence by capturing different knowledge systems and success stories. And they not only give us a way to demonstrate that success, but they are the proof of concept to apply at different scales and geographies. And we'll keep updating those case studies as more more implementation is done. So here, just a quick example, a summary of what it looks like. We have the actions and the infrastructure needs, and really want to emphasize they run in parallel. We can't wait for the perfect data to act. We can start acting now. And through adaptive management, we can monitor our actions and adapt as we gather more information, more data. And across the 12 targets, when we look at the priorities, we keep returning to those three key themes: the development of guidelines and best practices from how to survey and monitor fungi to protected areas management, harvesting, or invasive species. Also, the identification of important areas, not only areas of high diversity, but also where the largest knowledge gaps are. And finally, the need for standardized and consolidated open data that can be fed straight into the conservation tools, such as Red Listing, GBAs, and national and global monitoring. And we've seen at this COP various initiatives being launched, like CARES and the 20 by 30 that build on this data, and if fungi are not included, they'll be left out of those initiatives. Okay, so where do we start? Because we don't want just a nice report or a nice strategy, right? It's all about action. It's all about implementation. So it really depends on the national context, and we got some of the feedback that the strategy could be quite overwhelming, but we wanted it to be comprehensive, and because it's so different, when you look at Europe where you already have species checklists, you have long-running, strong mycological communities, they can go straight into actions, and then we have countries where they're starting from the foundations where they don't even know where to start, so we wanted to provide that and recognize that this strategy needs to be adapted to the national context from country to country. And, yeah, we recognize the need for those foundational countries where limited data or taxonomic infrastructure, starting by documenting and cataloging diversity and accelerating extinction risk assessments, because a lot of the indicators used to measure progress, build on those frameworks. And I just want to give three quick examples of what this looks like. So one example is SPUN's Underground Atlas, which was published last year. It was the first map of mycorrhizal fungi hotspots at the global level. And through this map, we can find, we could see that 90% of mycorrhizal fungal diversity hotspots are not protected. And with this map, we can now start looking at where the priorities are to put mycorrhizal fungi into spatial planning and protected areas decision. And this is just for mycorrhizal fungi, that's just one group of fungi. Now we need to do that for the other groups as well. And a lot of the knowledge we have around fungi are based on terrestrial and soil, but for those of you who don't know, fungi also occur in water, in our seas, in our lakes, in our rivers. And this is an example at the regional level where the project's most fun and fun action are putting aquatic fungi into European biodiversity monitoring and testing how well existing protected areas conserve them. So, the most fun project is building the shared protocols, open data infrastructure, and analytical tools needed to monitor aquatic fungi in a consistent way across Europe, while FUN Action works alongside it to map patterns in aquatic fungal diversity at the continental scale, asking whether the Europeans' existing protected areas actually conserve aquatic fungi, and if not, coming up with priorities. And then moving into the national level. In England, DEFRA is assessing soil condition across all habitats through the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment Programme, and mycorrhizal fungi are now part of that assessment. So Forest Research and Natural England were already collecting soil in large field surveys, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is now processing the roots from those samples to measure which fungi are present, how abundant they are, and which plants they partner with. So, FUNGI, in this case, FUNGI were added to field work that was already happening rather than needing a survey of their own. And the program was designed to fill government evidence gaps, so the data goes straight into policy. And this is exactly what the strategy asks for, is for FUNGI to go into monitoring that already exists without adding extra burden. And we hear a lot about collaboration, and the GBF builds on whole of government and whole of society, and it's very much true across all those three examples that I gave. They were possible because of partnerships and collaboration. And we need to involve not only researchers, policy makers, practitioners, local communities, industry, citizen science, community science. And people engagement are particularly crucial for groups like fungi, where we still have huge data and knowledge gaps. And just to finish, sorry, I want to call on everyone in this room to take part, join our network if you're interested. Let us know of any examples of work being done on fungal conservation and share the strategy, because at the end of the day, it cannot be done without fungi.

So thank you for enlightening us to the underground world of fungi. I don't know that I've ever been to a session on diversity where we have lots of talks on the diversity of plants and fungi, and animals aren't center stage. So even though I'm a zoologist, it is refreshing to think about the parts of our biodiversity world that we don't think of enough. So with that, I would like to thank our next last speaker and bring our next speaker, Violeta Muñoz Fuentes from WCMC to the floor to talk about how we make this data more available and usable by individuals as well as parties. Over to you, violeta.

Thank you. Thank you, Alice. Thank you everyone for being here. So today I'm wearing the hat of co-manager of UMBL, and I'll be showing how we are trying to drive data to action. So this is an analysis published by IUCN at COP 16, which shows how spatial data is critical for target one, but how also there are direct benefits for other targets, including target two, target three, and also up to 12 and 14. But we know there are challenges to effective spatial planning, and we heard this also from the global report. There are challenges in terms of data availability, data fragmentation, indicator selection and operationalization, data infrastructure, technical expertise, and capacity for GIS and spatial planning. And when we developed UMBL, we tried to address all of these challenges. So what is UMBL? I don't know how many people in the room know UMBL. Okay, well, so by the end of the session, you'll know what's UMBL. So UMBL is a spatial data platform for informed decision making, and it is developed in partnership by CBD, UNDP, UNEP, and UNEP-WCMC. It provides access to high quality spatial data, biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development, and this is curated by our team of data experts, and we also provide analytical tools. UMBL was created in 2008 to support commitments of the parties to the CBD, and then in 2020, it was redeveloped, UMBL2 was launched, and in order to support parties in terms of planning, implementation, and monitoring for the coming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Very importantly, it does not require GIS expertise to use, and it's available in five languages. All the metadata, the whole platform is available in five languages: English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. So there are a number of key features I will go into a little bit more detail in a moment, but just to give you a brief overview, I'm going to talk about access to spatial data, about the opportunity to create maps to support national reports, create a UMBL workspace and what benefits this could have for you, display dynamic metrics, develop a prioritised spatial plan using the ELSA tool, and very importantly, we also deliver capacity building workshops and customised user support. We have a great number of data partners and collaborators, they don't fit all in this slide, so this is just a subset. We work with more than 160 data partners and collaborators, and with them we try to not duplicate efforts, interconnect resources, and bring the data for decision making. So one of these first developments that I want to mention that we undertook last year is an open instance of the UMBL stack. Stack stands for its spatial temporal asset catalog. You don't need to understand what that means, but it's just a standard to access, to catalog and access spatial data. And one of our first users are Conservation International and One in a Box. You can build maps and access more than 2000 global data layers. So in this example, we've selected three layers that could be of interest at the national level. It includes mangrove annual expected benefit to people, protected areas, and coral reef connectivity. And you can zoom in and zoom out to view this data in more detail. For example, if you're interested in a particular protected area, so you could do that on the platform. also mentioned, we've considered an underground map to incorporate in UMBL. So another functionality we developed in the last year was the possibility to have interactive layers so that users have more control on the data they want to display on maps. In particular, the species data that is now available in UMBL, this was very much requested by the users. So on the top map, you can see in red endangered amphibians, and the dots are Ramsar sites. And this species data is filtered real time, queried real time from GBIF. And to be launched soon, we'll have ungulate migration routes, and this is in collaboration with him. So users can access a number of metrics in interactive dashboards. So as you can see there, you can select between metrics, headline indicators, and marine metrics. In the screenshot, you see land cover for Albania, and there are in total 12 terrestrial metrics and one marine metric. So here you can see protected index calculated for South Africa, and there's also a number of layers there. So apart from the protected index, protected connected index that you can see on the left, there's a number of layers intact wilderness areas. potential wildlife corridors and protected areas. So you have the ability to combine these metrics with other layers. The protected connected index is calculated by Bon in a Box, and we provide also direct access to Bon in a Box in case users want to use their pipelines, which are, you know, with increased interactivity, customization. Another metric that I wanted to show is the coastal eutrophication potential metric, it's our first marine metric in UMBL. There was the possibility to see marine data, but not marine metrics, so this is the first one. And this is developing collaboration with colleagues in Japan, which developed a coastal eutrophication watch. And there's also two headline indicators supported by FAO. And not only is this metrics that are already available and pre-calculated for every country in the world, but now users can also create their own metric displays. For this, users need to request a UMBL workspace, upload their data, and then, and this is an example on the screen for Ecuador. So I'd like to play a video. I don't know exactly if I can do that. No? Oh, yes, it's playing. That's great. So you can now create a polygon in UMBL and display metrics for this polygon. So the developer here chose to create a polygon around Cambridge. That's where some of our team, some of where our team is based. You can save this polygon. You can decide to keep it private in your workspace, or you can publish it. And then you save it, and very straightforwardly, you can see the metrics for that area. And then the last functionality I wanted to show before we move on to show you some numbers in relation to impact is the spatial planning tool, or ELSA. In this example, you can see Cuba. And this is a way to create maps that show actions to protect, manage, and restore in order to obtain maximum benefits. So what is our impact? So UMBL is being used by a number of countries. So the first impact story I want to bring is Honduras. In this case, they use UMBL to harmonize data and fill national data gaps. You see two screenshots there that show you the protected area coverage and the risk of pesticide pollution. The next impact story comes from Uzbekistan. In this case, UMBL data layers were accessed for the 7th national report, and you see on the screenshot a map for biodiversity intactness and for protected area connectedness. They also use it to calculate land cover change and also terrestrial carbon density. In numbers, UMBL has at the moment almost 4000 registered users spanning 160 countries, 397 government users from 91 countries, and we have more than 30 ELSA tools in use at the moment. And then this is just to show you activity per country. We have peaks of activity in the United States, in South America, and in India. Before I finish, i would like to invite you all to meet the team. So we will be at the Biodiversity Innovation and Technology Fair between the 20th and the 30th of October. So if you want to see the tool, to ask questions, meet the team, please come and say hello. So with that, I thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, violetta, for giving us insights into how we can make that data more usable and more accessible, and I'm sure a lot of people will hopefully be visiting you to ask difficult questions at the expo. So with that, i would like to thank you. Thank you once more, and then bring our last speaker for the session to the stage. We've talked a lot about species, we've talked a bit about tools, but we haven't talked about ecosystems. So our last speaker will be addressing an often neglected system. Other analysis shows that there is very little data from some of these high mountain inaccessible systems. So thank you, Davna Erbek, who is here from the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment. Over to you, Davna.

Thank you very much. And I know you are all tired, and I take you to the mountains. It's steep, it gets cold, and I'm really sorry for that, but maybe it's gonna energize you, and I hope so. Yeah, I'm Daphne Wobach from the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment, and I'm happy to be here thanks to Future Earth, with our infrastructure in which we are nested, as well as the Swiss Academy for Natural Sciences, thanks to whom our network functions. Yeah, mountains. Who works in mountains among you? Great, so quite a few of you know that there are many, many mountains in the world, and you can see that on the map, a confirmation where you can see more than 8,500 polygons of mountains. And most of you, all of you maybe know that mountains are very, very rich in species. Here just a few examples. And the take-home message on this slide is that there are many mountains, and they're all different, and they go up. And when you start from the bottom and you go to the top, you realize that you are not at the same place anymore. And that brings up a number of challenges in terms of data and in terms of reporting. And unfortunately, I can't announce that we have a new mountain indicator, rather the opposite. So we are kind of taking a piggyback ride on what's out there as an indicator for mountains, which is SDG 15.4.1 on protected area coverage of mountain key biodiversity areas. And I'm using this example to make us reflect together a little bit on the challenges of talking about mountains and working in mountains. What you see here, the official reporting on SDG 15.4.1. for one by country, and it turns out that in mountains, because of the way they are and the way this indicator is being calculated, if you don't really read the metadata, you calculate different things depending on whether you use the official metrics or you use other metrics. And that is kind of interesting and useful to know. Site-based reporting, which is the case for this indicator, is quite different from area-based reporting. So when you say that the biodiversity a mountain key biodiversity area is well protected, might well be the case that it's not as well protected as you might think. Now, something that is useful to look at in more detail is that, and I don't ask you to look at the graphic in detail, but one important data set that is used in different methodologies to calculate the KBA, to calculate the SDG, are the key biodiversity areas. And I'm not going to enter the discussion of whether those key biodiversity areas are useful to use or not. They are there and they are to be used, but the issue with them in mountains is that although there are apparently many more KBAs in mountains than elsewhere in the world, if you look at the official map, well, you'll see that it doesn't quite reflect the coverage of mountains. So all those yellow dots are not quite representative of mountain areas. And indeed, what we did at GMB with the help of Jonas Keschke, an early career scientist, is that we looked at the area of countries and the area of mountain ranges compared lowlands in gray with highlands or mountains, which is everything else that is colored in this slide. And in brown, you see the surface area that are not KBAs. And what you can quickly realize is that for many countries, very few mountain areas are being covered by KBAs, which means that Reporting on the state of mountain biodiversity when using SDG 15.4.1, which is the best we have for now, is slightly biased because many regions in mountains are not recognized as KBAs. And at the bottom of this slide, you have different mountain ranges and the situation is the same. Just as a little something to enjoy. What you'll see as well in light green are the protected areas that are not covering KBAs, dark green, the KBAs that are protected by protected areas, and in red, all the KBAs that are not protected by protected areas. And you will see that, unfortunately, there are quite a few. Now, one of the reasons why many areas in mountains are not yet named KBAs is that we don't have sufficient data. And here I'm showing you work in progress that we are doing at GMBN in the context of our very first ever, I still have a very first to announce, a very first ever assessment of mountain biodiversity at global scale. It's the work of a colleague in Chile. that shows that using GBIF data, it's quite obvious that some regions are relatively well covered in South America, here, Chile and Argentina, and others have basically no digitized records. So what does it mean? We don't know what there is, so why call it a KBA, and why try to protect it, and why care for it? So an issue with data availability in mountains, and it's difficult to get data for mountains because mountains are steep, they're far away, it's much harder to collect data in mountains than anywhere else, mostly. And not only are there gaps in data, point records, et cetera, but monitoring in mountains in general and long-term monitoring in mountains in general is relatively weak. What this slide shows is using data from GLORIA, from the dams, and from Myron, a network on invasive species, you can see that there are hotspots of long-term monitoring in mountains in central Europe, the very dark dots, and there are cold spots elsewhere, for instance, in South Africa or in Central Asia, where we have very little long-term monitoring between a density of less than six sites per billion square kilometers, and about 230. What you can also see, and I know it's small, but it's quite easy to see, is that in many places where mountains are being monitored more or less on the long run, only the lower regions of the mountains are being monitored. So there's little long-term monitoring of mountains and of mountain biodiversity in higher elevations, besides the GLORIA network, which has been becoming famous for the long-term monitoring of summits. We have issues with data in mountains for biodiversity, for ecosystems, but it turns out that we are not quite well catered for other dimensions that are important for predicting species and species distribution. This is the case for precipitation and temperature. And just to make us reflect a little bit of the challenges we have, on the right hand side, the coverage in Switzerland of precipitation and temperature monitoring sites, and the situation in Argentina and in Kenya, obviously the left hand map doesn't show of all of Argentina, but it basically shows some clustering of precipitation records while the rest of the country is pretty much void of precipitation data. So not only do we have little data for mountains in terms of biodiversity and ecosystems, but we also have little data to predict possible changes, and thus to start thinking quite effectively about conservation. Another point with biodiversity data in mountains, I don't think it's only an issue in mountains, but in any case here, what Lotta Schulz is showing, Lotta is a PhD student, and I'm showing only results from early career scientists on purpose, is that the threat status of individual species varies between the global dataset and national datasets. And in many cases, in black, you have an upgrade from less threatened to more threatened when you move from one country to another and from the global reporting to the country level reporting. And it's even country level. And if you think about how many mountains a country can be covered by, you will realize that in fact we would need to have red lists by mountain ranges, which is not existing. And so the challenge with data like that is that it becomes difficult to report on this threat status of species and take actions, because depending on what list you are looking at, the message is going to be different. Now, we can still work with what we have, and that's what Lotta is typically doing. She's taking data sets, global data sets for mammals, for birds, for reptiles and amphibians, and for plants. She's combining this information with literature, doing spatial analysis, integrating elevational data, and then running the results by experts, in addition to joining them with conservation assessment lists, in order to support the conservation planning in the And it's work in collaboration with ECMMAT and I'm happy to have Sunita Choudhary in the room. Now, talking about literature, I just want to point out that we haven't talked much about literature at all in those sessions, if I listen carefully. And in fact, there is a lot of information on biodiversity status and trends in the literature, but it's worth to be aware of the fact that if you start looking at literature in English and in Spanish, you will find that the information available Here you see on the map on the right hand side literature in English and on the left hand side in Spanish for birds. It's worked on by a freshly graduated student from the US. This literature covers different species or taxonomy groups, and in fact, we found out that in the Spanish literature, some birds are being reported that are critically endangered, that are not discussed at all in English literature. So you can't just look at literature in English, you do need to be all-encompassing, and the same holds true for literature in Chinese, we did the same effort there. And here, it's extremely small, but what this slide shows is that when you start incorporating expert knowledge to validate the information, the thin information we have for mountains, turns out that it gets messy. Why? Because a species that's detected in an elevational gradient in a part of a mountain range, on the top we have the Southern Andes, is not going to be detected at the same elevational range in other parts of the Andes, for instance, Central Andes at the bottom. So, the elevation gradient, the conservation status, the challenges that species are facing or being faced with differ within individual mountain ranges. So, it takes a lot of experts to validate data in mountains, and those experts are unfortunately partly missing, especially for certain taxonomy groups, and I can look at my right neighbor because there's certainly an issue there as well. In any case, what Lotta has been doing using all this information and being very much aware of data quality we've talked about yesterday, is to look at transboundary mammals species of conservation concern using all those national threat data and global ones to come up with a map, and that's work in progress. I'm grateful for this data not to be shared on any platform. Also, identifying across border the regions where the number of shared species is particularly high, and that's what you see in very bold. So in certain areas you have particularly many species that are shared across borders and that need shared conservation. With the help of ICIMOD, there's a lot of work being done on transboundary conservation. I think it's an exemplary case of efforts towards transboundary conservation. Oftentimes, the baselines or the information is lacking to really identify priorities and be able to perform targeted efforts. But nevertheless, with the data we have and with some additional modeling efforts, we can start identifying regions of particular importance within countries and across borders, and look at how well they are protected in order to inform regions and countries in how much they need to more they could do in collaboration. Collaborations are difficult, and we also are very much aware of the challenges of transboundary collaboration in current geopolitical times, but nevertheless, such information is mutual and might be useful. And here you see in green the areas that are protected and those that are not protected in bold black might benefit from more attention. Take home message, reporting on mountains also within the current global biodiversity framework.

It is possible to have no excuse, and given the importance of mountains in terms of species, in terms of ecosystem, ecosystem services, and human population, we can't just ignore them. So let's try to see what we can do with the data we have, and I'm showing that we can in fact report, being aware that methods matter and data quality as well. But of course, as I showed, mountains make it challenging because they're far away, they're steep, and everything changes everywhere in mountains. And we have larger observation gaps from short-term to long-term monitoring data, and those observation gaps influence data sets that are used for reporting. And I think we need to be aware of such biases in the data sets we use for global reporting, because they are definitely making a difference on how much we appreciate the protection of our ecosystems. As I said, large information gaps and inconsistencies between region and mountain ranges, and there's definitely an improvement needed in terms of data collection and expertise. to improve this, the quality and the quantity of our data. But again, we have data, and I think we have been hearing several times today, there's no point in constantly saying we don't have enough data. We do have data, we can use it, being aware of the limitations. Thank you very much.

And thank you to Daphna and indeed all speakers of our incredible all-female panel. So I'm going to hand over to Isabella for the final part of the session.

Thank you so much to all of you for your presentation. So all this presentation raises the challenge of fragmenting knowledge and incomplete data sets in various fields or ecosystem. And it also demonstrates the importance of tools that are interacting with the local level. Such knowledge can be useful both for local practitioners, but they can also, conversely, local practitioners can also fill all these data gaps. And we have seen that this initiative also highlighted the importance of community and citizen science to answer some of these gaps. So thank you again for this presentation and to all of you, and we will close this session for today. Many thanks to all of you.

So just a note, the closing session will begin in 15 minutes. There are snack boxes and coffee outside, but do come and join us for the final closing session of a very successful Science Policy Forum. And thank you for staying with us and giving us your weekends.

Exactly. I will also. Nice to meet you. I'm so proud to see all women. Is this a surprise? Well, no. Because things are changing. In Mongolia, actually, we have a lot of poor women scientists than men. But because of the society, so, you know. I've been told by a male colleague that with my pea brain, I couldn't possibly understand what he was talking about. I thought he was a PhD.

But then he's only studying for it.

So I was like, oh. I know.

There's a lot of science.

I saw people behind them. I really did think, especially with the women were actually the ones who pulled it off. Because they were drinking and feeling sorry for themselves. And then some little boy comes up to me with my pee break. I couldn't possibly say my first one. Because he took them two months to come. And he said, "Why are you so cute?" So, meaning that, get along, you know? And then he says, "You're pretty."

Exactly, it seems to be becoming like developing multiple personality disorders, because recently I realized that I've been told to be a big boy, then I'm supposed to be a perfect student, then a leader, then money maker, then something, breadwinner, and everything else. And every time I had to jump into a different role, jump into a different role.

Exactly, and I tell that to, because I work with children for 25 years, I work with orphans, right? So I tell them that, but then I realized that I was the one who, you know, since childhood, I've been told that we play the role, so I just somehow didn't, you know, be a visible role and I kept doing this.

I know, I know exactly how it is.

Yes, thank you.

I do need your contacts because we have a situation right now, and I'll send you information. because we need experts who actually can make public conclusions. Yes, yes, yes, because what's happening? Oh, of course not. Let's do it. Let's do it. Well, let's take a selfie. Yes, please. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, I would love to, because we just need international experts, we really do.

Let's meet. Oh, fantastic. I am listening.

We probably need your help based on, yes, because we've had a few incidents and two government agencies come along. It's just like beautiful situation. So juicy, so juicy. At the beginning it was like, how do we have fun? That's my day part. And what's that? Yes. Yeah, because we're conservationists. Oh, you just take a picture and then it just, it will begin. Oh, okay. Well, okay. I got it. Okay. Oh, yes. Thank you. Exactly. With your prayer. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Yes, I will do that. Thank you so much. I absolutely will, because I really do want to.

You mean that I can actually show something more rather than being completely dressed? It's important to engage with curious people, so.

A little bit of mannequin's helpful.

Can it with my laptop? What's name? Sorry.

Yeah. Great. Good. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Happy. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Oh, okay, we have better ones. That might be easier.

These are not. That's just very interesting.

Okay, great.

That's a good one. No, we have a few here. Maybe this can help us to put them. There are two for each. Oh, you need one on each side of it.

Yeah, much better.

There's a gill in here.

Oh, okay.

We have two big eggs.

Oh, maybe we're good? We'll be good in about one minute. We're almost there. That's the wrong one. Yes, we are almost ready. Yeah, maybe two minutes longer do we need? Just two minutes. Where is the plastic? Yeah, let's make a really big pile. Give me the other one and I can sort it in.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't need to be here, Julie. No, no, it's an order of speakers. It's not two speakers. And we need two chairs. Just bring them up.

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon, and thank you for being here. We are about to start. My name is Lily Rodriguez. I'm from IUBS, and this is.

I'm Alice Hughes. I'm also a representative of IUBS. We would like to thank you for staying with us for a phenomenal Science Policy Forum. We are very lucky to have some very special guests with us this evening. So firstly, we would like to hand over to the Deputy Minister of the Environment for the Republic of Armenia. I think I can say on behalf of everyone that we've all been massively impressed and are very grateful for how Armenia has hosted this CBD COP and also provided the space for a very fruitful and productive science policy forum. So I would love to hand it over to you to say some closing words.