Local and regional authorities: enthusiasm is priceless
11 October 2007, Belgrade, Serbia. Throughout the 6th Ministerial ‘Environment for Europe’ Conference in Belgrade (10 – 12 October) the IUCN – Countdown 2010 Biodiversity Lounge attracted many of the 2000 conference participants to attend side events, have discussions and meet colleagues or new people. A highlight of the Lounge program was a side event on “Local and regional authorities as champions for biodiversity 2010”, organized by ECNC – European Center for Nature Conservation, the Countdown 2010 Secretariat and the Dutch and Croatian Governments.
The event presented several projects and examples on how to successfully engage local and regional authorities into nature conservation. The list of panelists and participants was very broad and gathered a lot of expertise: Jan Sevenster from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), Mayor Dr Frank Petter from the Province of Noord-Brabant, Goran Vasic from the Council of Europe, Sebastian Winkler, Head of Countdown 2010 as well as several biodiversity project managers came together to have a discussion around to two major questions: what needs to be done to increase and improve nature conservation activities on the local level, and what are the priorities we should focus on?
Frank Petter, representing the Province of Noord-Brabant where, so far, almost 40 partners have joined the Countdown 2010 initiative and created a broad range of activities around the 2010 biodiversity target, said: “First of all, we have to help citizens to understand that working on biodiversity is not a burden, but fun! Then you need to make sure that this engagement and enthusiasm is being kept and spread. How do you do that? Well, give citizens and representatives like Mayors the possibility to communicate their success stories so that they are proud of their achievements and keep the engagement alive”.
Sebastian Winkler, Head of Countdown 2010, explained that “in order to reach this very goal, the 2010 biodiversity target turned out to be a very successful tool because it allows a lot of different partners to take action in the view of a common perspective: to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010.” Spreading the message by building up networks of committed local and regional authorities and make them exchange best practices were identified as priorities.
Jan Sevenster, LNV, said: “What we can do is to give seed money to local and regional authorities which they can use to create a lively biodiversity network; but the enthusiasm these activities and the their success is based on is actually priceless. It’s not only about money; we need more of these authorities who live up to their responsibilities.”
The Chair of the event, Sir Brian Unwin, President of ECNC and honorary President of the European Investment Bank, finally reminded the audience of a very basic precondition for successfully communicating and implementing biodiversity actions: “to use a language people – and not only biodiversity experts – understand if we want them to take action to halt the loss of species”.
