Rationale

Biodiversity is life. It provides the foundation for humanity to survive and thrive. Biodiversity does not only affect the well-being of humanity and future generations, but also determines the sustainability of global development and civilization. Biodiversity is indivisible, interconnected, and intertwined with human life on Earth.

Recently, the rapid economic development of most Asian countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, has been considered impressive. Unfortunately, it has been achieved at the expense of the environment, destabilizing the delivery of natural products and ecosystem services, thereby threatening to undermine future growth, food security, and regional economic stability. The region is now facing the prospect of a dwindling supply of environmental capital to support the growing demands of a rapidly growing urbanized population. Despite continued efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide and this decline is projected to worsen in a business-as-usual scenario. This is shown by the continuing trend of decreasing biodiversity from 2011 to 2020. Furthermore, by 2020, at the global level, none of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed by the CBD Parties in 2010 had been fully achieved.

Aside from rapid population growth and anthropogenic activities, ecosystem degradation is caused by various complex factors, including among others, deforestation, forest fires, flooding, climate change, and invasion of invasive plants. In fact, anthropogenic activities are primary factor that is contribute to biodiiversity lost. Hence, strengthening ecological civilization becomes imperative. In line with this is the responsibility of the biodiversity advocates and partners to brace themselves together in strengthening nature’s defense against the enemies of sustainable biodiversity, and to partner together with BIOTROP in achieving its vision to become a reputable center in sustainable biodiversity management in SEA

Conference Objectives

The conference will provide a forum for policy and decision makers, scientist and practitioners to share valuable lessons, to address challenges, to generate commitments in strengthening policy decisions, and to work collaboratively towards a sustainable and integrated regional development in Southeast Asia for a good quality of life based on the interdependence that exists between humans, other living species, and elements of nature.

Expected Outputs

The conference is expected to bring about consensus or agreement among the participants on an agenda for advocacy actions on biodiversity enrichment, conservation and management; and to identify new approaches to and synchroneity between policies and practices that will form the framework to provide future direction for research and development in the sustainable management of biodiversity conservation, through:

• Development of Asia Biodiversity Network (ABN)
• Agreement of Biodiversity Platform
• Publishment of scientific publication