On August 4 of this year, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) held a videoconference meeting with the Member Countries, to advance an assessment of biological diversity and ecosystem services in the Amazon Region. With the participation of representatives of the eight Amazon countries, through their Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Ministries of the Environment and other competent entities in the sector, it was agreed to carry out coordination work to advance the development of this regional evaluation, under the conceptual and methodological format of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
The evaluation of biological diversity and ecosystem services in the Amazon Region will allow identifying the situation and trends related to biological diversity and ecosystem services and their interrelationships; threats and opportunities to biological diversity that impact human well-being; and the effectiveness of the responses, particularly in relation to the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on biodiversity conservation, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits resulting from the use of the genetic resources. In addition, the evaluation will be linked to the post-2020 Global Framework for Biological Diversity, currently under negotiation in the CBD.
For this purpose, the Permanent Secretariat of ACTO (PS/ACTO) will become the technical secretariat of the evaluation, with the technical and scientific support of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute of Colombia. It should also be noted that the evaluation will be financed with GIZ resources from the German Cooperation. The study will take as input the evaluations on biological diversity and ecosystem services carried out by IPBES, such as the global evaluation and the evaluation of the Americas, in addition to the evaluations carried out in Brazil and Colombia under the IPBES format, and other ongoing initiatives.
The ACTO Member Countries will shortly continue with the dialogue on technical and operational aspects regarding the development of the study, particularly in relation to the proposal of the Scope Document, the terms of reference for the selection of the Scientific Committee, in addition to the specific work schedule.
