New Complimentary Actions for the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation adopted at UNCBD CoP16

  • Region

    Global
  • Programme

    BGCI
  • Workstream

    Sharing Knowledge and Resources
  • Topic

    Plant Conservation
  • Type

    News
  • Source

    BGCI

News Published: 19 November 2024

On Friday 2nd November the new Voluntary Complimentary Actions for the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) were adopted at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity CoP16 hosted in Cali, Colombia. This adoption marks the third phase of the GSPC, and provides 21 actions for the global plant conservation community to champion and contribute towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF).

The adoption came at the end of a busy two weeks in Cali for BGCI staff and the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation. This included contributing to several panels discussing the role of botanic gardens in implementing the KMGBF, presenting on the success of the Global Tree Assessment and also launching The Global Biodiversity Standard.

On Tuesday 22nd October a side event specifically on the GSPC was hosted. The event was well attended with a full house in the Cocora tent. The side event drew particular attention to the important role that the GSPC has played in mobilizing action amongst a wide range of stakeholders in relation to plant conservation, and supporting the achievement of several Aichi Targets. There was also a focus on current activities and how they contribute to the new GSPC complimentary actions. Presentations were given by Missouri Botanic Garden, Plantlife, Reverse the Red, CONABIO and the Coalition for Conservation Genetics.

Unlike previous decade phases of the GSPC, for this phase it has been fully aligned to the KMGBF, meaning that instead of having specific plant conservation targets there are plant conservation voluntary complimentary actions which align and support each target of the KMGBF. This means any reporting of plant conservation action will be directly attributed towards achieving the goals of both the GSPC and the KMGBF.

The Global Partnership for Plant Conservation (GPPC) now begins its journey of informing the wider world about the new GSPC Complimentary Actions. There will be lots to come in 2025 including a series of webinars, the expansion of Plantlife’s plant actions toolkit and a new website for the GSPC. But first, in March 2025 the International Plant Conservation Conference will be hosted at Missouri Botanic Garden in partnership with the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation.

The conference is open to all stakeholders to register, take part and provide updates on their plant conservation activities. How these activities contribute to the GSPC on a local, national and international level will be highlighted.

As well as presentations and panels there will be a series of working groups discussing monitoring, implementation and governance of the GSPC. If you would like to be part of the beginnings of this new phase of the GSPC please do register and attend the conference by emailing GPPC2025@mobot.org. The call for presentations, workshop proposals, abstracts, and registrations will be released soon.

Now is also the time to register your interest in becoming a member of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation. For the new phase of the GSPC we are also revamping the GPPC– please email policy@bgci.org for more information.

Interested in attending the conference? Please email GPPC2025@mobot.org

To find out more about the GSPC in our most recent podcast series and on the BGCI website.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 4