Summary report, 26–27 April 2010

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) held a consultation for Caribbean nations in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on Monday, 26 April and Tuesday, 27 April as part of a regional initiative entitled “Biodiversity and Ecosystems: Why these are Important for Sustained Growth and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean” (the Initiative) to prepare a report on the role of biodiversity in wealth generation and support of wellbeing in the region. The first consultation was held in Mexico City from 13-14 August 2009, the second in Lima, Peru from 24-25 September, the third in Caracas, Venezuela from 4-5 November, the fourth in Quito, Ecuador from 24-25 November, the fifth in Bogota, Colombia from 30 November – 1 December, and the sixth in Guatemala City, Guatemala from 3-4 December. The final consultation is scheduled for Brasilia, Brazil at a date to be determined. Each seeks the inputs of national experts and stakeholders.

The Caribbean consultation included participants from Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Suriname as well as Trinidad and Tobago, representing government entities, conservation groups, protected areas and UNDP offices. On Monday, participants heard morning plenary presentations on the Initiative and the regional report, and in the afternoon they broke out into working groups to discuss emblematic policies in Caribbean nations, identify key sectors for promoting investment in biodiversity and ecosystem services and any existing barriers to such investments. Deliberations resumed on Tuesday with participants convening in working groups to first discuss insights from case studies from Paraguay and Indonesia, and then to recommend inputs to the regional report on principal arguments to use, ways to convince decision-makers and dissemination strategies. In the final plenary participants recommended key messages and ways to enrich the Initiative.

BRIEF HISTORY

The 2008-2011 UNDP Regional Programme for LAC has identified the Initiative as one of its regional strategic areas. Organized in partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Initiative aims to convince policy- and decision-makers in the region to invest in and maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The Initiative’s primary product will be a report examining a number of issues including: financial and economic benefits and costs to countries from sustainable ecosystem management; the contribution of biodiversity and ecosystems to sectoral production and outputs; their economic value; and the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in promoting growth and equity. The report’s production is supervised and guided by a Commission for Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Finance and Development composed of the region’s political leaders, economists, businessmen and civil society representatives. The report’s quality control will be overseen by a technical advisory committee of regional, finance and economic experts, while much of the report’s actual preparation will be done by a central technical committee composed primarily of environmental economists. With a view to reflecting the diverse experiences and views of LAC nations, a series of consultations across the region was initiated in August 2009 to seek direct input from representatives of governments, civil society, indigenous communities, academia and the private sector. Participants in each consultation hold discussions on four themes: contributions of biodiversity and ecosystem services to LAC’s development and equity; paradigmatic cases of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services in the country/region concerned and their impact on development and equity; strategic areas and mechanisms to promote investment in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services; and inputs to the regional report. The outputs of these meetings will be incorporated into the report.

The final report is intended not only to contribute to national policies, but also to key global and regional policy events to be held this year, including the: tenth Conference of the Parties to CBD; the International Year of Biodiversity; Latin American, Ibero-American and European Union/Latin America and Caribbean summits; and post-Kyoto negotiations. The Initiative also will contribute to a global study being undertaken on Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity sponsored by the European Commission and the German Ministry of Environment.

MEXICO CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Mexico City, Mexico on 13-14 August 2009 and was attended by representatives of government entities, conservation groups, indigenous communities, the academic community and the state hydrocarbons firm, Pemex. Key outputs were identification of many Mexican projects and programmes involving compensation for ecosystem services, and the lessons learned and key trouble issues identified, such as property rights and difficulties in arriving at decisions involving communal land. (For IISD RS coverage see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/pdf/larc0101e.pdf)

PERU CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Lima, Peru on 24-25 September 2009 and was attended by representatives of: government entities; conservation groups; the academic community; organizations representing Peru’s regions; indigenous communities; and associations and companies in the forestry, finance, hydrocarbon, fishery and ecological product sectors. The opening plenary was addressed by Peru’s Environment Minister, Antonio Brack Egg. Participants highlighted some unique cases and identified strategic areas as mining, hydrocarbons, agriculture, and water. They also identified key issues they felt the regional report should address, including biofuels, trade barriers, lack of R&D in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, CO2 capture, and the relationship of patents with traditional knowledge. (For IISD RS coverage see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/pdf/larc0102e.pdf)

VENEZUELA CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Caracas, Venezuela on 4-5 November 2009 and was attended by representatives of: government entities; conservation groups; the academic and scientific communities; and associations and companies representing the hydroelectric, hydrocarbons and fisheries sectors. Participants discussed several case studies and identified energy, tourism, forestry, protected areas, health, sustainable agriculture, fisheries, water and mining as strategic areas. They suggested the payment for environmental services concept would have to be modified before it would be accepted in Venezuela, and expressed preoccupation with ecosystems shared across national boundaries. (For IISD RS coverage see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/pdf/larc0103e.pdf)

ECUADOR CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Quito, Ecuador on 24-25 November 2009 and was attended by representatives of: government and international entities; environment and conservation groups; the academic community; and representatives from the Amazonian and highland regions of Ecuador. Participants discussed several case studies and identified the strategic sectors as agriculture, tourism, forestry, water, coastal and marine resources, and biocommerce/biotechnology. They also stressed spiritual values, ancestral knowledge and the need for a communications strategy that links biodiversity, daily life and culture. (For a UNDP summary see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/biodiv/lacbq/pdf/Rapporteur_Report_Ecuador_ENG.pdf)

COLOMBIA CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Bogota, Colombia on 30 November – 1 December 2009 and was attended by representatives of: government entities; conservation groups; the academic and scientific communities; and a business association. Participants discussed several case studies and identified the strategic sectors as mining/energy, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, forestry and biocommerce. They emphasized that while Colombia has much of the environmental institutional structure and policy instruments needed to do more on biodiversity, it must give it higher priority, coordinate and integrate it with other policy areas, and stress a commercial-economic vision for sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems. (For IISD RS coverage see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/pdf/larc0104e.pdf)

CENTRAL AMERICAN CONSULTATION: This consultation took place in Guatemala City, Guatemala on 3-4 December 2009 and was attended by representatives from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama of: government entities; regional organizations; conservation groups; the academic and indigenous communities; a bioproduct producer and a private sector ecotourism project. Participants from five nations identified tourism as a strategic area, while agriculture, forestry, water and energy were identified by three nations apiece, and fisheries and protected areas by two. Participants suggested water as a thematic axis, stressed the role of biodiversity in providing food security and addressing climate change, and offered ideas for possible follow-up at the Central American level. (For IISD RS coverage see: http://enb.iisd.org/larc/pdf/larc0105e.pdf)

REPORT OF THE CARIBBEAN CONSULTATION

OPENING PLENARY

Facilitated by Nicole Leotaud, Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), Trinidad and Tobago, the consultation opened on Monday, 26 April. Marcia de Castro, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative, Trinidad and Tobago, stressed biodiversity conservation as critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and to the future of the sector critical to most Caribbean economies, tourism. She said too many countries built hotels and brought in cruise ships without regard to their impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services, or considering how the damage to those resources might affect attracting tourism in the future. She underlined that the Caribbean is very blessed with biodiversity, but is also leading in losing its biodiversity assets.

Emily Gaynor Rick-Forde, Minister of Planning, Housing and the Environment, Trinidad and Tobago, noted that the Caribbean is a biodiversity hot spot and stressed biodiversity as crucial to mitigating and adapting to the challenges posed by climate change. She said that the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Initiative report is particularly timely, as Trinidad and Tobago is just wrapping up public consultations on three linked draft policies on forestry, climate change and protected areas. She further noted that a particular problem identified has been financing options for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services and hoped the consultation would discuss regional cooperation options on such financing.

FIRST SESSION: CONTRIBUTIONS OF BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES TO LAC’S DEVELOPMENT AND EQUITY

Emma Torres, Senior Advisor, UNDP Regional Bureau for LAC, explained the Initiative’s origin, organization and principal objectives. She stressed UNDP is not doing original research for the report, but rather is trying to gather existing data, and that the report is only the first step in what UNDP hopes will be years of work on the subject. She underscored that LAC is a biodiversity superpower. She outlined key issues emerging in the report including that: there is limited data on input of biodiversity and ecosystem services to sectoral outputs; business-as-usual (BAU) management of one sector can cause negative externalities for other sectors, while sustainable environmental management (SEM) of one sector can create positive externalities for other sectors; ecosystem degradation under BAU disproportionately impacts the poor, but SEM offers them greater prospects for employment and income; and LAC is at the forefront of new, innovative financing for conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, but it needs to scale up.

Torres reported that a March UNDP consultation with finance and conservation experts identified several key issues: applicable lessons learned for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) from clean development mechanism (CDM) market shortcomings; the need to resolve issues in how best to distribute revenues from offsets; the need to improve and standardize measurement systems for biodiversity offsets; and how to expand the role of development and private banks in green finance.

She concluded by saying that the report is expected to be ready in the third quarter of 2010, in time to be presented to the UN General Assembly when it devotes a day to debating biodiversity.

A member of the regional report’s preparation team, Carlos Eduardo Young, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, summarized the draft report’s status, organization and approach, and stated its principal messages as that: SEM is pro-growth; the poor lose from BAU; SEM particularly benefits the poor and middle class; transitioning from BAU to SEM is affordable. He outlined policy issues emerging from the earlier of the Report’s chapters, that: ecosystems, economic activities and livelihoods are strongly linked across LAC; current production practices can be improved by taking into account the flow of ecosystem services; current policies often act to discourage the inclusion of the flow of ecosystem services; and “smart investment” may be required to bridge the information, technology, market access and profitability gaps between currently common production practices and widespread adoption of broad SEM. He then illustrated the sectoral analysis of the report by summarizing some of the figures and findings in the chapter on tourism.

Maurice Mason, consultant, UNDP, outlined the analysis of the Caribbean context he was preparing for the regional report. He explained that his analysis will look at agriculture, tourism, fisheries and forestry, but since data across the region is sparse or not publicly available, often not comparable and sometimes outdated, his report will focus on using proxies to assess the economic value of ecosystem services in the region, and on analyzing trends rather than specific data points, while identifying data needs for future analysis. He reported that messages emerging from the data are that economic performance in these sectors is linked to the state of the environment in which they operate, but that heavy investment by Caribbean states in physical infrastructure and human resources is not being matched by investment in natural capital.

In subsequent discussion, several participants expressed skepticism about the data presented on tourism in the Caribbean. Young urged all participants to provide the report team with, or alert them to, better sources if they spotted problems with the data being presented. Torres suggested that perhaps the draft tourism chapter could be circulated to all participants of this consultation for review, since it focuses particularly on the Caribbean.

Asked why protected areas was picked as a “sector” chapter focus, Torres said that it was partially due to the inspiration provided by Peru’s Environment Minister, who through an analysis of economic benefits that investments in protected areas can spur, persuaded his government to double its budget for such areas. Responding to a comment about several key stakeholders, including the financial and the scientific community, missing from the consultation, Torres asked the help of participants in enlisting those stakeholders in providing input to the regional report.

SECOND SESSION: PARADIGMATIC CASES OF BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN THE CARIBBEAN AND THEIR IMPACT ON DEVELOPMENT AND EQUITY

During Monday afternoon’s first session, participants divided into four working groups to identify which Caribbean experiences and policies could be considered emblematic and should be mentioned in the regional report. Facilitator Leotaud then asked each group to report to the plenary one particularly interesting case from each country discussed. The groups reported the following emblematic cases:

• Dominica: an environmental levy imposed on scuba divers to feed a community-based fund that protects the Soufrière/Scottshead Marine Reserve and aids fishermen in accessing other areas and fishing in more productive, less environmentally damaging ways.
• Guyana: North Rupununi District Development Board helping indigenous communities near the Iwokrama protected area through training to be tour guides, research assistants, and sustainable harvesters of natural resources (butterflies, ornamental fish, etc.). Now implementing a pilot payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme.
• Jamaica: the Tourism Enhancement Fund, fed by a US$1 charge per visitor and funds earmarked solely for enhancing tourism prospects, increasingly including ecotourism.
• Saint Lucia: Soufrière Marine Management Area.
• St. Vincent and the Grenadines: the new Parks Authority backed by legislation and regulations, which has identified 19 sites for protection and stresses ecotourism.
• Suriname: sustainable community and commercial timber harvesting practices.
• Trinidad and Tobago: Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project, a non-governmental organization (NGO) formed by a local community that protects the area, reforests, preserves the soil, operates fire patrols and generates income for projects and training through craft sales, school tours and seedling sales.

THIRD SESSION: STRATEGIC AREAS AND MECHANISMS TO PROMOTE INVESTMENT IN BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

During Monday afternoon’s second session, participants divided into five working groups on the following strategic sectors for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services in the Caribbean: tourism; forestry; fisheries; water; and protected areas. Each working group was asked to identify: opportunity costs and existing barriers to sustainable management; how best to provide incentives to invest in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services; and innovative financing mechanisms toward these ends. After the group discussions, each group rapporteur reported to the plenary:

• Protected Areas: the group identified opportunities as: revenue generation potential; conservation education and research (tours and studies); and the linking of ecosystems (ridge to reef concept). The group identified risks/barriers as: development pressure; competition for limited space; land tenure; lack of regulations/legislation; lack of enforcement; lack of incentives (alternative livelihoods); and trade and market forces (pressure for resources). As for strategy recommendations, the group suggested co-management strategies (government-private partnerships); tax incentives for putting private land under protection; the promotion of green products from protected areas; PES provided by protected areas; carbon markets; and national or regional trust funds.
• Forestry: the group identified opportunity costs as lost mining and timber production. They said the risks/barriers included: the different priorities of neighboring countries – when one nation might choose to stop timber production in the name of REDD, another might get increased pressure to harvest timber; land tenure; access and benefit sharing; and finding a viable alternative to charcoal production and marijuana planting. On strategy, the group suggested: cost/benefit assessment of best values offered by forests, such as ecotourism, REDD or timber; promoting carbon sequestration; and corporate/traditional people bioprospecting partnerships for identifying medicinal plants.
• Water: the group identified the opportunities as: the possibility to introduce integrated watershed management; introducing water metering and linking water prices to actual costs; updating water infrastructure; recharging depleted aquifers; and promoting rainwater harvesting. Participants identified risks/barriers as: poor governance; the perception of water as a human right rather than a good; lack of metering in some countries; and water bottlers not paying the true cost of their water use. As for strategies, participants suggested: separating commercial and residential use, with higher rates for the former; introducing wastewater treatment, especially in tourism zones; modernizing irrigation systems for agriculture to prevent water loss; and imposing a mandatory water reservoir requirement for homes.
• Tourism: the group said there is a need to brand biodiversity as a tourism product, market natural resources, and that the transition to SEM can be the basis of new dialogue between NGOs, tourism boards and governments. The group identified barriers to a successful transition as: lack of knowledge and communication among potential partners; the need for stronger institutions, regulation and coordination; and “free riders,” meaning key players benefiting from beneficial environment moves without contributing to them. As for strategies, the group recommended following the example of the Dominican Republic by requiring or giving incentives to hotels not involved in ecotourism to institute environmental management systems.
• Fisheries: the group identified the opportunities as: replanting mangroves; instituting “no net loss” policies whereby some areas are given to development as long as they are counterbalanced with integrated ecosystem protection; and sharing information among the islands on which public education programmes work and which do not. The group identified barriers as: international boundaries not being well-defined; outdated laws with extremely low fines; overreliance on international rules rather than improving local regulations; a persistent, unsustainable mindset about what is desirable development; limited financial resources; and alien invasive species (AIS). As for strategies, the group suggested: updating laws, making them as powerful as international instruments, and harmonizing them across the region; being proactive; requiring every development project to have a public education component; researching the current state of resources to identify the needs; and ratifying conventions that help combat AIS (such as the International Convention on the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments).

FOURTH SESSION: DISCUSSION OF CASE STUDIES

On Tuesday morning in plenary, Facilitator Leotaud summarized the prior day’s work. A participant remarked that while the case for BAU’s impact on Caribbean biodiversity and ecosystem services appears to be fairly well-documented, the data to make the case for SEM appears weaker. A discussion ensued about the lack of data and comparability of data in the Caribbean, and whether the report should call for follow-up capacity-building projects to improve, regularize and make more comparable data gathering, analysis and dissemination.

María José Baptista, Project Manager, UNDP Regional Bureau for LAC, then explained The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) global project and presented two TEEB case studies, one on PES access in Paraguay, the other on motivating Indonesian authorities to adequately protect Leuser National Park in Aceh Province through studies of the economic losses. Four groups were formed, two to discuss the Indonesian case, and two to discuss the Paraguayan case. Each was asked to ponder the lessons from these case studies and how they might relate to the situation in their countries.

Both groups examining the Indonesian case study found the economic valuation exercise useful. One group suggested that a similar exercise be undertaken for the ecosystem service loss – specifically water and soil loss – due to farming around the Soufrière Mountains in St. Vincent. The other group said that such an exercise might have prevented the environmental disaster which occurred in Saint Lucia when a national park not appreciated by the local population was allowed to be developed for a huge five-star hotel complex. This latter example prompted a debate about whether Caribbean nations should be worrying more about preserving the environment as it is or engaging in “environmental engineering,” meaning “tweaking the environment” to ensure that the needed ecosystem services are provided while tourism development is also allowed.

The two groups examining the Paraguayan case study expressed interest in the Paraguayan approach and noted a pilot PES scheme in the Iwokrama in Guyana, tourism lodges in Marowine and community forestry schemes in Suriname. They suggested that PES might be applicable for carbon, water and biodiversity schemes in the region, and could be linked to welfare schemes, with actual funds transferred to the communities managing the resources for projects identified by them as priorities. As for the most important requirements for PES schemes to benefit the poor, they suggested: ensuring community participation in the design; community accessibility to the area and its services; enhancing willingness to pay by clearly showing the link to service provided; and careful monitoring of the scheme’s functioning.

FIFTH SESSION: INPUTS TO THE REGIONAL REPORT

On Tuesday, Facilitator Leotaud divided participants into three working groups organized by the following sectors - tourism and fisheries; water and forests; and protected areas - to reflect on several questions, in particular: what the principal arguments are for promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services as contributing to growth and equity; how best to convince decision-makers of the need to invest in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services as cross-cutting foci in national development plans; and what actions should be undertaken to disseminate the regional report. Following discussions, the working group rapporteurs then reported to plenary.

The tourism and fisheries group suggested: using the message of “investing in paradise in order to market paradise,” namely, investing in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in order to keep what attracts tourists to the Caribbean; in targeting politicians use quantitative data that, for example, show employment effects of investing in biodiversity; in targeting potential investors, use practical examples; stressing the importance of balanced development; meeting decision-makers away from their offices, perhaps in events or field trips, where there is more time to interact and dialogue.

The forestry and water group suggested: improving governance for water and enforcement for forestry; promoting an integrated approach to watershed management; tailoring briefs to politicians; promoting multi-stakeholder approaches that involve communities, NGOs and governments; using international donor partners, particularly when they coordinate on their message, to influence governments to take action; using creative approaches to influence the public, such as videos, music, art and dramas; and following the regional launch event for the report with a series of smaller, more local events tailored to different target audiences.

The protected areas group suggested: targeting high-level audiences first, then letting the message trickle down; creating a comprehensive list of specific decision-makers in Caribbean states to target, as well as appropriate regional bodies; targeting messages to Cabinet Ministers with briefs containing clear pros and cons plus examples of what has worked elsewhere; and targeting financial institutions, civil society including NGOs and academics.

In subsequent discussion, a participant inquired as to whether UNDP’s communication strategy for the regional report included monitoring of whether the messaging was effective in prompting change. Baptista explained that due to funding limitations, no post-release monitoring is planned, but that a website will be created with all the associated materials that UNDP hopes will spark movement on this issue for years after the report is released.

CLOSING PLENARY

On Tuesday, in closing plenary, Facilitator Leotaud presented a summary of the consultation’s main ideas and conclusions, including that:

• this is an important initiative for the Caribbean region that can help provide the economic arguments for conservation;
• the Caribbean has good cases studies to offer as examples;
• there are capacity gaps in the region that need to be addressed by:
• studying existing case studies (where data is not collected);
• collecting and analyzing existing data;
• promoting exchanges between the region’s economists and ecologists; and/or
• building capacity in effective communication/advocacy;
• working across sectors and countries to share experiences and ideas and reach a regional approach is critical; and
• the Caribbean needs to develop a common voice on this issue.

Leotaud added that CANARI was open to identifying specific capacity needs and assisting countries in finding funding to address them.

In the ensuing discussion, one participant expressed concern that the report will differentiate between Caribbean concerns and Latin American concerns. Baptista said that while the report will look at data from across the region, the communication strategy for the report will target its message to the audience, so that when addressing Caribbean decision-makers, the issues most important to them will be emphasized. In response to one participant's concern that the “Caribbean voice” may be drowned out by the “Latin American voice,” Baptista noted several chapters will feature Caribbean case studies, and that one criticism of the draft tourism chapter is that it focuses too heavily on the Caribbean.

Another participant expressed concern that the consultation had not included some key actors such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Internaitonal Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and representatives of the sectors affected. Baptista said that because not all desired parties attended the consultation, she, Leotaud and Mason will reach out separately to those actors.

The consultation came to a close at 1:15 pm.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

UNDP - LAC BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEMS CONSULTATIONS: The final consultation in the UN Development Programme Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) Biodiversity and Ecosystems consultation series is slated for Brasilia, Brazil in May 2010 on a date to be confirmed. For more information contact: María José Baptista, UNDP; tel: +1 212 906 54 18; fax: +1 212 906 6017; e-mail: maria.jose.baptista@undp.org

SIXTH EU-LAC SUMMIT: The sixth EU-LAC Summit will take place on 18 May 2010 in Madrid, preceded by a Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs on 17 May. The theme of the Summit will be: “Towards a new stage in the bi-regional partnership: Innovation and Technology for sustainable development and social inclusion.” The Madrid Summit aims to bring together not only Heads of State and Governments from LAC and Europe, but also important non-state actors. For more information see: http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/lac/index_en.htm

IBERO-AMERICAN SUMMIT: The Twentieth Ibero-American Summit, bringing together heads of state and government from Spain, Portugal and the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations of Latin America, will be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 11-12 November 2010. The subject of biodiversity is expected to be on the Summit agenda. For more information contact: Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB); tel: +34 91 590 19 80; fax: +34 91 590 19 81; Internet: http://www.segib.org

CBD COP 10: The tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP 10) will meet in Nagoya, Japan on 18-29 October 2010. COP 10 is expected to assess achievement of the 2010 target to reduce significantly the rate of biodiversity loss, adopt an international regime on ABS and celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity 2010. A High-level Segment will be held from 27-29 October 2010. For more information contact: CBD Secretariat; tel: +1-514-288-2220; fax: +1-514-288-6588; e-mail: secretariat@cbd.int; Internet: http://www.cbd.int/meetings/

The UNDP LAC Regional Biodiversity Initiative Bulletin is a publication of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) <info@iisd.ca>, publishers of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin c <enb@iisd.org>. This issue was written by Keith Ripley. The Editor is Leonie Gordon <leonie@iisd.org>. The UNDP LAC Regional Biodiversity Initiative Bulletin is part of IISD Reporting Service’s Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Coverage Project in partnership with the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The Director of IISD Reporting Services is Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI <kimo@iisd.org>. Funding for the UNDP LAC Regional Biodiversity Initiative Bulletin has been provided by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, through the Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Coverage Project for IISD Reporting Service’s coverage of meetings in Latin America and the Caribbean. IISD can be contacted at 161 Portage Avenue East, 6th Floor, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 0Y4, Canada; tel: +1-204-958-7700; fax: +1-204-958-7710. The opinions expressed in the Bulletin are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IISD. Excerpts from the Bulletin may be used in other publications with appropriate academic citation. Electronic versions of the Bulletin are sent to the electronic distribution list (in HTML and PDF formats) and can be found on the Linkages WWW-server at http://enb.iisd.org/larc/biodiv/lacbm/. For additional information, including requests to provide reporting services, contact the Director of IISD Reporting Services at <kimo@iisd.org>, +1-646-536-7556 or 300 East 56th St., 11A, New York, New York 10022, United States of America.