The World Conservation Congress (WCC), one of the world’s largest environmental gatherings, is convened every four years under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to find collaborative solutions to conserve global biodiversity and ecosystems, and harness the solutions nature offers to global development challenges.
The WCC convenes in Honolulu, Hawai’i from 1–10 September 2016. The congress will include the IUCN’s 1 300 member organisations from across 161 countries, all seeking to develop the conservation and governance responses necessary to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss. At the WCC, IUCN members representing government, the private sector and civil society will vote on motions and resolutions that lay out the global conservation agenda for the next four years. The 100 proposed motions are aligned with the overarching objectives of valuing and conserving nature, ensuring the effective and equitable governance of its use, and deploying nature-based solutions to global challenges in climate, food and development.
Recommendations:
- the IUCN, and its 2017-2020 Programme, must support the overarching objectives of the post-2015 UN development agenda and seek to establish an international framework for ecosystem-based climate action
- African stakeholders must call for clearly identified roles and responsibilities, and associated action plans, to enhance the ownership of resolutions and support their implementation
- African members must ensure consolidated voting positions, aligned with rigorous scientific data, which highlight the continent’s most important and vulnerable ecosystems and biodiversity