Capacity-Building for Biodiversity in Impact Assessment

Brown Pelican ©Jeremy Barker

The Latin American region covers a vast area that goes from Colombia to Argentina. Although there are important cultural, political social, economical and environmental differences, most countries from the region are linked by multiple characteristics. Simultaneously, it is a region that covers a very wide range of ecosystems and multiple biodiversity hotspots. Tourism is an important activity throughout the region, and there is a wide link between this activity and biodiversity rich areas. Most of the region has long embraced Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as the primary tool for environmental management and planning. During the past years several difficulties have arisen, mainly related with the excessive dependence on EIA and with the limitations of working exclusively at the project level. There is a main concern from the private and public sectors on how these issues might have been affecting the countries' competitiveness. Although some countries have recently started to approach different assessment tools at more strategic levels, the shift towards these has been slow and difficult. Nevertheless, there is a latent need and call from the region in order to obtain thorough training in these types of tools.

There is a general lack of effective approaches to strategic planning and the consideration of biodiversity-related issues in the region. Emerging development of SEA is seen as an opportunity to ensure that new legislation has biodiversity well integrated from the beginning, using flexible models that are appropriate to the region. Most of the SEA training efforts within the region have been theoretical and, although the participants understand and discuss the theory of SEA, there is a call for a more practical approach.

In addition there is a growing demand for opportunities in tertiary education (currently lacking) to study biodiversity and impact assessment within the region.

CBBIA's main objective in the region has been to enhance capacity to perform effective Strategic Environmental Assessment, and to raise awareness of the benefits of combining SEA with other planning and decision making tools. Opportunities are now being sought to enhance capacity within the region through provision of high quality tertiary learning about IA as a tool for sustained provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Information presented at conferences and training sessions through the life of the CBBIA project can be found through the outputs module.

CBBIA organised a series of SEA workshops in partnership with the World Bank. These were based on working with key Ministries to ensure that biodiversity becomes mainstreamed across all sectors and Ministries. The workshops were also based on strong community participation and provided an effective model for testing and embedding the CBD voluntary guidance on biodiversity-inclusive SEA.

Most workshops comprised four types of meetings, targeting different groups of local, national and regional stakeholders:

High level government officers from host countries
Representatives from universities and academia (emphasis on understanding SEA as a tool and reviewing possibilities for biodiversity-inclusive SEA to be incorporated in curricula of national and regional universities)
Staff from technical government entities (different sectors), practitioners and NGOs (emphasis on needs for technical and sectoral guidance)
Sub-regional stakeholders including environmental and non-environmental authorities and institutions and with a high level of community involvement and participation (a more practical focus with real life case-studies performed by participants)

Workshops were held for the Andean Countries (in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia), the South Cone (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Central America and the Caribbean (in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic). Two additional workshops were held in Bogota, Colombia (focusing on IA for planning in Protected Areas) and in La Paz, Bolivia (on merging existing EIA systems with SEA for sectoral planning at national level).

Country- and region-specific outputs from the CBBIA project are also listed here:

Latin America

Brazil

Central America

Costa Rica