Ministry endorses second biodiversity strategic plan |31 July 2015

The Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change has endorsed the second National Biodiversity Strategic and Action Plan (NBSAP).

It has also launched the newly developed Seychelles Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

These took place on Tuesday during an official ceremony at Le Meridien Fisherman’s Cove Hotel at Bel Ombre.

The documents were launched by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Climate Change, Didier Dogley, in the presence of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representatives, environmental and non-governmental officials and other stakeholders.

Seychelles’ NBSAP is the principal instrument for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the national level. The Convention required Seychelles to prepare an updated national biodiversity strategy and to ensure that this strategy is mainstreamed into the planning and activities of all those sectors whose activities can have an impact (positive or negative) on biodiversity.

Seychelles submitted its first NBSAP back in 1998. The newly updated document has been prepared under the NBSAP project, implemented by the government of Seychelles, UNDP and Global Environment Facility Programme Coordination Unit (GOS-UNDP-GEF PCU).  It was recently approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and it was submitted to the CBD soon after the launching by the country’s CBD Focal Point, Denis Matatiken.

Part of the NBSAP project also included the development of the Seychelles CHM.

The CHM is a worldwide network of government and partner organisations facilitating scientific and technical cooperation through information exchange. This website promotes the information and services available mainly in the context of biodiversity.

Each party to the CBD must at some point in time create its own national CHM, and as of this year Seychelles has its own which is aimed at promoting, enabling access to and sharing of information and technologies for the sustainable management of biodiversity in Seychelles.

The website comprises documents and reports, pictures of Seychelles biodiversity taken by conservationists and nature enthusiasts, but also other conventions which Seychelles is a party to. The website will be linked up to the global CHM as well as the CBD through the CBD Focal Point shortly after its launch.

Minister Dogley acknowledged Seychelles success stories where biodiversity is concerned.

He mentioned species that have been saved from extinction, the increased number of NGOS now in the environment sector and even the young people who have come aboard to give a hand.

He described this second biodiversity action plan as a good document and a good one for us to start building upon.

He said Seychelles signed three triplets of conventions which came to light from the Rio summit in 1992. They were the UN Convention to Combating Desertification (CCD); the Convention for Climate Change (CCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The recent launch of the CBD now allows a national action plan for each one of them and Minister Dogley remarked that not all countries have got an action plan in those areas.

“Seychelles has got a complete set of strategies of where we want to go and how we want to do it,” said Mr Dogley.

“The success of the NBSAP project is to remind people of its wider aim – national biodiversity planning, support of the implementation of the CBD 2011-2020 strategic plan in Seychelles,” said Roland Alcindor, UNDP programme manager Seychelles.

He paid tribute to the minister himself who has been a driving force behind biodiversity conservation in Seychelles and other stakeholders, be it local or foreign, who have contributed towards the project.

The minister was later given a copy of the Seychelles NBSAP 2011-2020 by Mr Matatiken of the Focal Point for the CBD. The principal secretaries of that ministry and other stakeholders also received a copy.