The CMS Secretariat has released of the Central Asian Flyway (CAF) Action Plan for the Conservation of Migratory Waterbirds and their Habitats. The Action Plan is the outcome of six years of work including two intergovernmental meetings. The Meeting to Conclude and Endorse the Proposed Central Asian Flyway Action Plan to Conserve Migratory Waterbirds and their Habitats took place in New Delhi, India, from 10-12 June 2005. The New Delhi Meeting was the second official meeting of the Central Asian Flyway Range States after the first held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 2001, to discuss a draft Action Plan for the CAF and various legal and institutional options to support an Action Plan’s implementation.

Nearly 100 participants attended the New Delhi Meeting including delegates from 23 of 30 Range States and a number of international and national level non-governmental organisations.

CMS organised the meeting, in cooperation with Wetlands International, who also provided technical advice to the CMS Secretariat and in-kind support to the meeting. The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests hosted the event with organisational support from the Wildlife Institute of India. The Governments of India, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as CMS, the African-Eurasian Waterbirds Agreement (AEWA), the Global Environment Facility, the UNEP Regional Offices for West Asia, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe (Pan-European Biodiversity and Landscape Strategy) provided generous financial contributions.

The meeting had four primary objectives to: (1) provide Range State delegations with an overview of flyway conservation issues; (2) finalise and endorse the draft CAF Action Plan; (3) consider, prioritise and endorse selected implementation activities, and lay the basis for exploring and possibly establishing an interim coordination mechanism; and (4) develop a consensus on their preferred option for a legal and institutional framework for the CAF region.

The outcomes of the meeting are summarised in the meeting’s report that includes the New Delhi Meeting Statement.

The New Delhi Meeting finalized the draft Action Plan. Wetlands International in consultation with the CMS Secretariat revised the Action Plan to incorporate technical comments received following the New Delhi Meeting. The text remains to be officially adopted by the Range States.

In Resolution 8.5 the Eighth Meeting of the CMS Conference of the Parties welcomes the Action Plan’s finalization. It also recognises the need to establish an appropriate legal and institutional framework to support the Action Plan’s implementation, and notes the Range State participants’ preference at the New Delhi Meeting for the Action Plan to be appended to a legally binding instrument: AEWA.

Another intergovernmental meeting might be necessary for the Range States to identify a legal and institutional option and to officially adopt the Action Plan text. The meeting would likely take place in mid to late 2007 in conjunction with the Sixth Meeting of the Range States to the CMS Siberian Crane Memorandum of Understanding.

Until a way forward is agreed, Range States, interested organisations and experts have been invited to draw from the principles and actions reflected in the Action Plan as a basis to prioritise their on-going work to conserve the migratory waterbirds and habitats of the Central Asian Flyway.

CMS will also work actively with the Range States, other interested States, international organisations and Wetlands International to support the Action Plan’s interim implementation at the flyway level.

The CMS Secretariat has successfully reached an agreement with Wetlands International to establish a coordination mechanism to support the Action Plan’s interim implementation to:

· Provide a flyway level presence to promote awareness and support for the Action Plan amongst Range States, international agencies, partner organisations and donors;

· Develop proposals and source funding for at least two of the seven flyway level implementation priorities identified by the New Delhi Meeting including: (1) a monitoring strategy and the means to strengthen capacity for monitoring waterbirds in the CAF and (2) a flyway status overview of national and international conservation aspects of migratory waterbirds and their habitats as a basis for cooperative conservation action;

· Catalyse information exchange between the Range States about issues of common concern; and

· Develop and maintain a web portal and electronic discussion forum for the Central Asian Flyway initiative.

In addition, the issue of avian influenza has been of increasing concern in 2005-06 because of the potential grave implications for the global animal and human health sectors, the economic and development sectors and the conservation sectors, including migratory waterbirds and their habitats. Strategies for responding to the threat of this disease are being developed around the globe.

CMS has established an international Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds to prioritise action. CMS recognises the urgent need for the sharing of flyway scale migration information on wild waterbirds. However, in the CAF region it is currently not readily available and this needs flyway wide-attention and cooperation. This issue does not feature in the New Delhi Meeting priority list of projects, but it has since emerged and is now on the top of the global agenda.

CMS has proposed to the Range States to make this an additional implementation priority for CAF in order to provide the basis to develop a flyway level project as soon as possible. It will work closely with Wetlands International to develop a project that could be added to the interim coordination mechanism’s task list.

With the generous financial support of the German Government, CMS has committed USD 25,000 to the initial establishment of the interim coordination mechanism. The estimated total cost would be about USD 50,000 per year.

The Eighth Meeting of the CMS Conference of the Parties (Nairobi, 2005) invited Range States, other interested States and interested intergovernmental and international non-governmental organisations to consider making generous in-kind or financial contributions to support the next steps towards adopting and implementing the Action Plan.

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