Research Needs of the CBD
Research needs expressed in the CBD programmes
Contents of the study
Germany as a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and as a member of the European Union (EU) committed itself to the target to significantly reduce (CBD) and even halt (EU) the loss of biodiversity until 2010. To reach this ambitious target there is (amongst others) a need for an enhanced cooperation between science and decision makers, in order to come to decisions based on the best available scientific advise.
The CBD in its different thematic programmes of work (e.g. on forests, mountains, inland waters, agricultural and dry and sub-humid biological diversity) as well as in programmes to cross-cutting issues (e.g. protected areas, impact assessment) formulates research needs in a more or less explicit way in the goals and actions of the respective programmes. In order to facilitate the recognition of the research needs the current study wants to highlight the research needs expressed in all the programmes of work as formulated in the COP Decisions under the CBD.
For that purpose, 92 Decisions of all eight COP meetings held so far were checked for passages that express research needs. These 92 Decisions include all Decisions that are mentioned under the respective headings of the issues on the CBD web pages.
The whole study only cites text from existing COP Decisions. All the research needs listed are already formulated in official CBD documents and therefore are in no way new requirements or opinions set up by the author of the study.
For each of the 24 thematic and cross-cutting issues under the CBD a table was created listing the cited research needs as expressed in the resepctive COP Decisions. As the study was preprared in 2007 the most recent Decisions that could be included were those from COP 8 (2006 in Curitia/Brasil).
