Assessing the impact of international cooperative initiatives on biodiversity

Biodiversity conservation within the gamut of global environmental governance has gained significant traction over the past three decades. Many initiatives to meet global biodiversity conservation targets have been launched in the meantime. Frameworks such as the latest Kunming/Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) have identified the importance of NGOs, social movements, firms and sub-national actors as change agents towards redressing biodiversity loss. This report terms such non-state actors ‘International Cooperative Initiatives on Biodiversity’ (ICIBs). It presents a framework to assess their impact on biodiversity conservation, and applies it to eight relevant cases. Although many uncertainties remain, the report shows that ICIBs reach 100s millions of hectares worldwide, and substantially contribute to enhancing biodiversity in those areas.