
2024 in Review: CAMCA at the COPs!
| January 7th, 2025 | News
CAMCA partners do a TON of work behind the scenes in our pilot areas – work that doesn’t always make the spotlight. But last year, we got to showcase all their hard work not once, but twice, on some of the biggest stages in the conservation world!
Nations sign multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) to tackle challenges that transcend political boundaries. Several of these agreements focus on protecting Earth’s biodiversity, including the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention for Migratory Species (CMS), which also happens to be a CAMCA partner.
Countries that sign these agreements meet regularly to discuss progress, introduce new resolutions, and set new goals or work programmes. The CBD meets every other year, and CMS meets once every 3 years. But 2024 was special because both were set to hold their meetings, called a Conference of the Parties (COP). CMS held their COP in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in February, and CBD met in Cali, Colombia, in October.
While many topics are up for discussion (check out the press release from CMS COP14 and outcomes from CBD COP16), local perspectives can sometimes get lost. We wanted to give our project partners the opportunity to talk to the government representatives, experts, and policymakers from around the world about their work on the ground. Central Asia doesn’t always get the spotlight at these meetings either, so these moments are crucial for raising awareness. Even more important, are the opportunities to connect and collaborate with like-minded initiatives to help make sure project outcomes last well into the future.
At both COPs, CAMCA co-hosted side events – events held adjacent to the main negotiations hall and designed to offer perspectives or discuss particular themes. For CAMCA, that theme was the synergies between biodiversity conservation and climate change – the challenges that this “polycrisis” creates, but also the opportunities to effectively address both problems simultaneously. While CAMCA isn’t the only project working on this topic, we wanted to shine a light on this challenge in a specific context: mountain communities and mountain species in Central Asia.
At the CMS COP14 event, panelists discussed policy synergies and financial upscaling. They also explored the role international financial institutions can play in addressing the “resource gap affecting the conservation … and the sustainable development and climate adaptation of local and indigenous communities in Asia’s high mountains,” as stated in Samarkand Declaration. You can read more about the event on the GRID-Arendal website.
At the CBD COP16, our event tackled some of the big questions, such as: How can biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management better account for climate change in management planning? How can ecosystem-based adaptation support conservation measures through community engagement? Once again, we looked at synergies at the local, national, and regional levels, including ways to support the development of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and other national strategic documents.
Beyond these events, another big goal of the CAMCA partnership is to put mountains back on the international and regional agenda. Mountains can sometimes get overlooked in global conversations, but they are home to half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots and 30% of the world’s key biodiversity areas (KBAs). More than half of humanity relies on freshwater that originates in mountains – including water stored in snow and glaciers – and all of the major rivers of the world have their headwaters in high-altitude areas.
As we head into the final year of the CAMCA project, we hope that CAMCA project activities and outcomes can inform future global efforts, like the International Year of Glaciers (2025) and the International Year of Rangelands (2026). Be sure to check back in with us later this year for further updates – maybe we will see you at another event!
“Mountains shift the way we see ourselves. They weather our spirits. Challenge our arrogance. Restore our wonder. More than ever, we need their wildness.” (Mountains, 2017).