On the 26th and 27th of February, 2020, representatives from KfW, SADC Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) and IUCN Eastern and Southern Africa Regional (ESARO) met at the IUCN EARO offices in Nairobi, Kenya to agree on a road map for the inception of the SADC Transfrontier Conservation Area Financing Facility (SADC TFCA FF) programme and the Training Facilities and Programmes for Wildlife Rangers and Managers in the SADC Region.

In March 2020, TRAFFIC presented on the Trade in Wildlife Information eXchange (TWIX) platform at the Horn of Africa Wildlife Enforcement Network (HAWEN) executive committee meeting held in Addis Ababa. This awareness workshop which brought together participants from HAWEN’s IGAD Member States was also supported by the USAID funded ‘Conserving Natural Capital and Enhancing Collaborative Management of Transboundary Resources in East Africa’ – CONNECT project. 

The African Forest Landscape Initiative, known as AFR100 is an ambitious initiative that targets to bring 100 million hectares of degraded and deforested land in Africa into restoration by 2030. Tanzania is one of the countries in the AFR100 and has pledged to restore 5.2mHa of degraded land and forests by 2030. This pledge was followed by the establishment of a national task force led by the Tanzania Forest Service and the Vice President Office. The two institutions have now embarked on the development of a national Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) strategy that will be the ultimate guide in the restoration process.

Coastal communities in Eastern Africa are increasingly using sustainable approaches to manage marine resources to both improve the ecological status of their environments and secure livelihoods. To support the conservation and development needs of these communities, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has partnered with Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean (CORDIO) to implement the Locally Empowered Area of Protection (LEAP) project in Kenya and Tanzania.

The BIOPAMA Eastern and Southern Africa Resource Hub is supporting joint actions with Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to meet their conservation priorities. A strategic planning workshop was held at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) in Nairobi, Kenya, from 24 to 25 February 2020.  

The workshop facilitated the identification of priorities for biodiversity conservation of protected and conserved areas

A pilot visit for the development of the BIOPAMA Regional Resource Hub (RRH) took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February 2020. The visit was aimed at understanding the priorities of Ethiopia in terms of protected areas management, governance and equity and identifying opportunities for partnership to support the country’s sustainable development.

During the visit, members of the BIOPAMA team from IUCN, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and RCMRD engaged with various Ethiopian conservation actors. 

From the 12-19 February 2020, the Coastal Resilience to Climate Change (CRCC) team together with Global Ecosystem Management Programme (GEMP) team conducted a training in Nacala, Mozambique for the project stakeholders, mainly province and district technical level staff. The training focused on how sustainable management of ecosystems will ensure that ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide the essential services to the coastal communities.

The Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management (BIOPAMA) Programme hosted the Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET) training workshop from 4 to 6 February 2020 in Kigali, Rwanda. A total of 31 participants from 20 African countries, representing environmental national agencies, protected area management teams, NGOs, academia and private sector were together to get an overview of the Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET).

For the last eight years, IUCN has been supporting the Government of Uganda to convene stakeholders to discuss Governments position prior its participation in the UNFCCC COP negotiations. This year 2020, IUCN together with Climate Action Network members and in collaboration with the Climate Change Department under the Ministry of Water and Environment, convened the post COP25 reflection workshop on 14th February 2020 in Kampala, Uganda.

The BIOPAMA Action Component provides funding opportunities to address protected and conserved areas, sustainable use of biodiversity, natural resources priorities for actions on the ground in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) countries. By adopting a landscape approach, these actions will also contribute to enhancing the local livelihoods through sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystem services, as well as increasing resilience to the impacts of climate change.

Following the first call for proposals under the BIOPAMA Action Component, seven proposals from Rwanda, Kenya, Madagascar, Zambia, and Namibia were selected to move forward to the contracting stage.