Find below exciting updates from our National Biodiversity Platforms (NBP) countries in West Africa, including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone.
Burkina Faso:
Meeting with high-profile delegates at the Ministry for Environment, Burkina Faso
January 2024: working session with government officials at the Permanent Secretariat of the National Council for Sustainable Development (SP/CNDD) to examine the report of the landscape review in preparation for the establishment of a national multi-stakeholders platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services in the country.
May 2024 – Adoption of a report analysing existing science, policy and practice initiatives and mechanisms in Burkina Faso
The West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Sanitation and the Permanent Secretariat of the National Council for Sustainable Development organised a national workshop in Ouagadougou on May 2 to validate the national landscape analysis report on existing science, policy and practice initiatives and mechanisms in Burkina Faso, in preparation for the establishment of the country’s national biodiversity platform.
“Combating threats to biodiversity cannot be the work of a single person. It is a combined effort, a synergy between different stakeholders. This platform aims to bring together the actors involved in biodiversity and ecosystem services, so that they can pool their efforts to better protect our biodiversity, which is quite rich, and so that our populations can benefit from it. That is why it is important to have this formal framework for exchanging and sharing experiences and data – to be able to formulate policies for better conservation of our biodiversity“, declared Dr Sylvestre Da, the national coordinator of the CABES project in Burkina Faso, in an interview published on Le Faso.
Côte d’Ivoire:
August 2023 – Côte d’Ivoire celebrates the launch of its national biodiversity platform.
On August 10, 2023, at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Bingerville, during the validation workshop for the study on existing science-policy-practice initiatives and mechanisms in Côte d’Ivoire, the country officially established its national biodiversity platform.
“The establishment of this national platform will provide Côte d’Ivoire with reliable data through assessments and studies on key biodiversity themes, support policies through the identification of relevant tools and methodologies aimed at strengthening development, build capacity and knowledge, contribute effectively to communication and awareness-raising“, declared Dr Yro Hyacinthe Tie, the country’s IPBES National Focal Point and Director of Environmental Quality and Risk Prevention at the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, in an interview published by Afrikchallenges.
