Governance
Good, and sustainable, governance of natural resources and ecosystems is key to halt biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems. This includes protection of areas particularly important for preserving biodiversity, and sustainable management of natural resources such as forests.
Protected areas are important for preserving biological diversity. They are also major economic assets and sources of formal employment in management, tourism and associated private enterprises. These opportunities arise not only inside the protected areas but also in their buffer zones and neighbouring areas.
The 10th Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya adopted a revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including 20 targets known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the 2011-2020 period. However, governments often only have limited capacities to establish, finance and manage protected areas.
The European Commission has therefore been funding a wide variety of actions for many years. These initiatives are designed to support the development and sustainable management of protected areas and their neighbouring landscapes, including buffer zones and biological corridors, the construction of access roads, ecotourism lodges, park headquarters, training for managers, and research and scientific monitoring. The central strategy is always to ensure that local populations are involved in the management of resources and receive benefits from them inside and outside the protected areas.
Forest ecosystems are a key part of the ecological infrastructure that supports human livelihoods and well-being. More than 350 million people living in poverty depend on forests for some part of their subsistence, and 60 million depend on them entirely. This is notably the case for many indigenous communities.
Forest biodiversity is increasingly threatened as a result of deforestation, forest degradation, fragmentation and other stresses. These pressures affect the unique biodiversity of forests and reduce the resilience of forest ecosystems, making them more vulnerable to changing environmental conditions like climate change.
The EU assists developing countries in their efforts to manage their forest resources sustainably and to address forest governance issues, to combat illegal logging and associated trade, and to design strategies to mitigate climate change. In 2003 the EU launched the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan to address illegal logging and associated trade.
The EU also strongly supports and is actively contributing to negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on actions to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). These initiatives include provisions to ensure that forests are managed sustainably and that biodiversity is preserved.