The most up-to-date assessment of conservation needs in the Upper Guinea region - including recommendations for priority areas, research opportunities, policy issues, and threats reduction - emerged from a Conservation Priority-Setting Workshop (CPW) held in Elmina, Ghana, in December 1999. The CPW, entitled "From the Forest to the Sea: Biodiversity Connections from Guinea to Togo," convened more than 140 expert conservationists, biologists, government officials, planners, and social scientists from nearly 30 countries. In a five-day consensus-building exercise, the participants combined their knowledge of biological distributions, habitat status, institutional capacities, and socioeconomic trends and opportunities to create a comprehensive picture of conservation in the six-country region comprised by the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem.
The resulting CPW outputs, including map, report, and CD-ROM with databases (the latter two to be released by early 2001), offer an investment guide to biodiversity conservation in the region, and suggest paths to conservation success in forest and coastal zones of the Upper Guinea region. The CPW was organized and coordinated by Conservation International, with support from the GEF. The results, however, are based on contributions from participants, and will be distributed to, and used by, multiple parties. The outputs have great potential to enrich ongoing national processes, such as National Biodiversity Conservation Strategies and National Environmental Action Plans, as well as evaluations of conservation effectiveness throughout the region. The CEPF ecosystem profile is largely based on recommendations from the CPW.
With the backdrop of a consensus-driven baseline of priorities, the ecosystem profile for the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem focuses on a review of known threats to biodiversity conservation and the current level of "investment" that has been mobilized by donors, government agencies and NGOs to combat such threats. The results of this analysis highlight the complementary niche that the CEPF seeks to fill in the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem. This niche is supported by an investment strategy that seeks to achieve five main funding outputs:
- strengthened local institutional capacity for conservation
- effective processes for coordination and ecosystem monitoring
- mechanisms for promotion and implementation of biodiversity corridors
- effective collaboration in community outreach, awareness building and education
- a fast response mechanism to address immediate and unpredicted conservation needs.
The purpose of the investment strategy is to facilitate the effective participation by nongovernmental and other private-sector organizations in the conservation of biodiversity in the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem.
To be eligible for funding under this ecosystem profile, a project must not only contribute to one or more of the strategic funding outputs, but must also meet the following general criteria:
- Project execution must be within World Bank client countries that have ratified or otherwise acceded to the Convention on Biological Diversity. (In the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem, projects executed within five countries -Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Togo and Sierra Leone-would meet these criteria. Liberia's CBD ratification instrument is currently pending with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Any project directly involving organizations based in Liberia must await the formal acceptance of the country as a Party to the CBD.)
- Project funding may by no means result in the physical relocation of people, be used for the purchase of land, be directed toward a government entity, or be used for the capitalization of trust funds or similar financial instruments.
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