Background
In February 2021, the IUCN membership approved the new IUCN Programme “Nature 2030”. Section 8 of the Programme, mandates the development of “a digital platform where all parts of the Union can voluntarily share their committed and realised contributions to meeting the Impact Targets as well as commitments against global policy targets such as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.”
Discussions for this vision date back a decade and planning is now underway to develop such a Contributions for Nature platform to allow constituents of the Union, and other non-state actors, to document spatially their intended contributions towards the IUCN Programme and by extension, towards the Global Biodiversity Framework, Paris Agreement, and SDGs. As a first phase, the aim is to deliver an operational Contributions for Nature platform by late 2021.
The Contributions for Nature platform will allow IUCN Members to document where they are undertaking (or planning to undertake) conservation and restoration actions. It will then overlay data for biodiversity (on potential for species extinction risk reduction, drawing from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species), and for nature-based solutions to climate change (on potential for carbon sequestration and storage, drawing from the Bonn Challenge Barometer). While the long-term vision for the Contributions for Nature platform spans the entire of the Nature 2030 IUCN Programme, the first phase of its development will focus on documentation of potential contributions to the Programme Areas on Land and Climate.
The Contributions for Nature platform will serve the key need for documenting contributions for nature from IUCN as a Union. It will document potential contributions in a quantitative way, complementary to, and interacting with other platforms, which allow documentation of qualitative pledges.
Anticipated benefits of the Contributions for Nature platform
- IUCN Members and other institutions can document their potential contributions towards global targets for nature in a given place.
- Networking and establishment of partnerships.
- Results can support planning, reporting, communications, and resource mobilisation within organisations and further afield.
- Action planning to fill gaps at national or regional level.
- Establishment of a basis for monitoring of delivery of actual contributions by 2030 and beyond
- Implementation of the IUCN “One Programme” to document overall potential contributions towards global targets.
Who will be able to document their potential contributions?
In the first phase, the core users – and beneficiaries – will be the IUCN Membership of non-governmental organisations, indigenous peoples’ organisations, and governments, and other IUCN constituents. Additional potential users will include non-state actors such as cities and subnational governments, and the private sector. Specifically:
- Non-governmental organisations and indigenous peoples’ organisations are likely to report on individual sites where they undertake conservation or restoration actions, for example individual protected areas, often key biodiversity areas, customary territories, etc.
- Government Agencies often also have spatial footprints under their jurisdictions, for example for national parks agencies and forest departments.
- State Members have potential contributions which are the same as their national territories. The potential contributions of other IUCN Member categories and institutions will therefore be nested within those of States.
- IUCN National and Regional Committees can serve a crucial role in advancing inclusion, peer support, outreach, and training for the platform at national levels.
- IUCN Commissions and the IUCN Secretariat can also potential contributions where their conservation and restoration actions are spatial, as with, for example, funding mechanisms like the Global Environment Facility and Green Climate Fund project agencies, and the Save Our Species Programme.
- Other non-state actors beyond the immediate IUCN constituency could also potentially contribute, for example, cities (building from the IUCN Urban Alliance) and the private sector (building from the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool).
Beyond the first phase, possibilities will be explored for how non-spatial contributions for nature, for example in the generation and dissemination of knowledge, can also be documented systematically. The Panorama platform, which documents success stories in a qualitative format, is an existing and wholly complementary mechanism, which can already be used to document such actions.
How will the Contributions for Nature platform work?
The Contributions for Nature platform will encompass two interacting systems: one for data entry by users and validation, a second for the public display of the validated data.
Given the necessary focus on spatial data, and variation around the world in the technology and capacity to handle such data, the Contributions for Nature platform will offer a range of options for data input, for example:
- Upload of Geographic Information System files
- Selection of pre-determined units (eg protected areas, key biodiversity areas)
- Drawing polygons on screen
- Entering a point (latitude and longitude) and associated km2 area value
Users will also be able to enter non-spatial documentation associated with their work, for example, type of conservation or restoration action, number of women and men employed in and benefitting from the work, timelines, needs for funding or technical support, narrative descriptions, and photographs.
