European ECO-Forum Delegation Joint Statement on Preparation to Kiev 2nd Intergovernmental Conference “Biodiversity in Europe”, Budapest, 27 February 2002 European ECO-Forum supports the PEBLDS Council efforts in preparation for the Kiev (2003) Conference and considers that biodiversity issue should be fully reflected in the Conference agenda. Achieved results of PEBLDS clearly demonstrate, that the Strategy should be developed into a coordinating forum to cohere activities under biodiversity related instruments. It seems to us highly important to provide a real integration of biodiversity conservation approaches into sectoral policy, as it is supposed to be discussed in the frame of the topic "Integrated land-use planning: biodiversity, agriculture, forestry and mountains". This agenda item is proposed by the Ad Hoc Preparatory Working Group of Senior Officials for "Environment for Europe" for the Fourth Session of the Executive Committee to be held on 1-2 March 2002 in Kiev, Ukraine. However, the theme proposed for the Biodiversity Meeting during the Kiev Conference "Integration of biodiversity considerations into policies of financial and private sectors" (STRA-CO (2002) 4) makes the proposed approach narrower. We would like to inform the participants that ECO-Forum is planning the Round Table discussion "Environment Policy Integration into Sectoral Policies". Besides this, ECO-Forum is trying to be actively involved in the preparation of a new document, proposed by Ukraine and Georgia - "Environmental Strategy for Newly Independent States", to provide necessary priority of the biodiversity conservation issue, including land use planning. Land privatisation and land use are the main issues for biodiversity conservation in the NIS region. We support the common opinion of the participants of this Conference that this region has special value for the realization of the CBD aims on the European level. Land use planning and regulation of land privatisation interconnect with the creation of the Pan-European Ecological Network, but now they do not receive appropriate attention in the work concerning the Network. Accepting the importance of the discussion on Biodiversity Resourcing and the necessity of such discussion during the Kiev Conference, we would like to propose for the Kiev agenda not only the European Biodiversity Resourcing Initiative, but also other important themes of the Strategy, including financing of the creation of the PEEN. Sub-regionalisation of policies, regulating biodiversity conservation, and procedures for the assessment of biodiversity values should reflect bio-geographical differences. A good example is the necessity of development and sub-regionalisation of the Bern Convention lists. As was already mentioned in the presentation of the ECO-Forum representative, we think that analysis of effectiveness of biodiversity focused development assistance, loans, co-funding, grants, aid, review of policies and programmes on biodiversity conservation in CEE and the NIS in course of the preparation for the 5th Ministerial Conference "Environment for Europe" (Kyiv, 2003) would be a crucial contribution to the effective refocusing of the "Environment for Europe" process on the NIS. |
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