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Gland/Bonn, 2 November 2011 -
With the generous support of Seosan City (Republic of Korea),
the Government of Switzerland and the Secretariat of the
East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP),
an international workshop to review good practice in international
initiatives for the conservation of migratory waterbirds
and other migratory birds was convened by the Secretariats
of the Ramsar Convention, the Convention on the Conservation
of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), the Agreement
on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds
(AEWA), the EAAFP and BirdLife International as well as
Wetlands International.
The workshop, held from 17 - 20 October
2011 and attended by 35 representatives and observers from
14 international organizations and seven Korean organizations,
was hosted by Seosan City at Hanseo University in the Republic
of Korea.
An increasing number of flyway-scale initiatives
for migratory bird conservation and wise use have been established
around the globe, with varied approaches and status, and
with considerable and valuable experiences to share. However,
the experiences of these initiatives, while often well publicized
within their own flyway, are often poorly known elsewhere.
This has led to independent evolution of approaches in different
flyways and relatively little exchange of experience between
flyways, or between flyway initiatives for different groups
of birds e.g. waterbirds, landbirds, soaring birds and seabirds.
While many of the challenges faced are similar, different
approaches have been taken to tackle them.
This workshop was the first to bring together
practitioners from all these flyway initiatives to share
lessons learned from the different approaches, assess their
strengths and weaknesses, and so provide a more global view
of our flyway conservation efforts thus far. This first
workshop focussed largely on waterbirds, the taxa for which
the flyway approach is most widely developed, but also included
representatives from raptor, landbird and seabird flyway
initiatives.
Flyway-relevant initiatives examined
during the Workshop were:
A. Statutory intergovernmental
initiatives
• The Convention on the Conservation
of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) and its Memoranda
of Understanding
• The African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement
(AEWA)
• The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
B. Public/Private Sector Partnerships
• East Asian-Australasian Flyway
Partnership
C. Voluntary Initiatives
• Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve
Network (WHSRN) (Americas)
• Partners in Flight (North American landbirds)
• Western Hemisphere Migratory Species Initiative
(WHMSI)
• Siberian Crane flyway initiatives (Asia)
• Raptor flyway initiatives
• BirdLife International’s Global Seabird Programme
• Wings Over Wetlands (WOW) partnership (Africa-Eurasia)
Contracting Parties to both the Ramsar
Convention and CMS have recognized the need for this inter-flyway
approach, and have called for such a workshop process. The
workshop was called specifically in response to the request
made by Ramsar Contracting Parties at their 10th Conference
(Changwon, Republic of Korea, 2008) Resolution X.22, which
urged “the governing bodies of flyway initiatives
to take steps to share knowledge and expertise on best practices
in the development and implementation of flyway-scale waterbird
conservation policies and practices, including successful
means of disseminating critical supporting data and information
to stakeholders and others” and encouraged the Secretariats
of Ramsar, CMS, AEWA and the biodiversity programme of the
Arctic Council “to work together with their governance
and scientific subsidiary bodies and other interested organizations
to establish a mechanism for such sharing of knowledge and
experience”. The workshop was designed also to respond
to CMS COP9 Resolution 9.2 which urged Ramsar, CMS, AEWA
and the Arctic Council “to establish a mechanism for
sharing knowledge, expertise and experience of best practices
across the various ‘north-south’ migratory waterbird
flyway initiatives and Agreement" and to contribute
to, and be complementary to the other work of, the CMS Working
Groups on Flyways and on Future Shape, which are reporting
to CMS COP10 in Bergen, Norway (20 – 25 November 2011).
The workshop began with an open session
which outlined how each of the flyway initiatives operates,
and described some of the main pressures being faced worldwide
by migratory birds, and opportunities for enhancing their
conservation status. Workshop presentations and discussions
were then organized under a) the objectives, operations
and experiences of a range of statutory and voluntary flyway
initiatives, and b) seven common and cross-cutting themes:
1. National engagement and implementation
2. Species conservation
3. Site/habitat conservation
4. Role of science
5. Innovative approaches
6. Developing capacity
7. Partnerships and stakeholder involvement
The workshop participants were unanimous
in their recognition of the value of knowledge and information
sharing across flyway initiatives, and agreed to establish
an open and inclusive network of flyway-scale initiatives,
so as to facilitate future networking, collaboration and
information-sharing between initiatives and their personnel,
to be entitled the “Global Interflyway Network”
(GIN).
A summary report of the workshop’s
conclusions and recommendations is being prepared for consideration
by the CMS Scientific Council (17 – 18 November 2011),
and a full workshop report is in preparation for publication
as a joint Ramsar//CMS/AEWA Technical Report.
Prof Nick Davidson
Deputy Secretary General
Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
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