Montreal, December 16, 2022 — There are at the least 559 Latin American and Caribbean chicken species liable to extinction. Sadly, since 1970, North America has misplaced 3 billion birds. As indicators of the well being of our surroundings, their decline is proof optimistic of the numerous threats destroying biodiversity and the habitats shared by birds and folks. Integrating our work throughout borders and alongside flyways is crucial to make sure birds’ survival and the way forward for hundreds of thousands of individuals within the hemisphere.
The Americas Flyways Initiative is a hemispheric response and alliance of BirdLife Worldwide, the Nationwide Audubon Society, and CAF (Improvement Financial institution of Latin America) to successfully handle the pressing biodiversity loss and local weather change crises by concrete scaled-up nature and community-based options. The alliance, introduced at present on the Biodiversity COP15 in Montreal, represents an unprecedented funding in chicken and biodiversity conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Efficient responses to biodiversity loss and local weather change challenges have been urgently demanded at each COP15, and the current Local weather Change COP27 held in Egypt.
These three main establishments are partnering to develop an initiative to determine over thirty important landscapes and seascapes alongside the Americas flyways for pressing conservation, restoration, and administration by native companions, communities, and indigenous peoples. America’s flyways cowl North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean, extending throughout 35 international locations, from the Arctic Circle within the north to Tierra del Fuego within the south.
This initiative builds on the groundbreaking basis launched in 2021 by BirdLife Worldwide, the Asian Improvement Financial institution (ADB), and the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership. The Americas maintain three of the eight main migratory chicken flyways on this planet, which makes this area pivotal to planetary biodiversity and local weather change response. However, stopover and wintering websites are disappearing at an alarming tempo alongside these routes.
“Birds are present in practically each habitat on Earth, connecting folks with nature,” mentioned Elizabeth Grey, CEO of the Nationwide Audubon Society. “The identical birds that captivate folks within the northern stretches of the Americas every summer season usually journey huge distances to please birdwatchers in South America every winter. Our Alliance goals to guard the very important flyways they use to traverse the continent whereas on the identical time mobilizing folks throughout the Americas to preserve the locations all of us must survive.”
Past borders and sectoral silos
Collaboration between the private and non-private sectors is vital to strengthening local weather motion and constructing long-term sustainable improvement. The Americas Flyways Initiative proposes a novel impactful strategy to biodiversity conservation by integrating and scaling up nature-based local weather options by main financial improvement initiatives designed to incorporate safeguards throughout a community of important habitats for declining populations of shared migratory birds all through the Americas.
Audubon and BirdLife Worldwide will use superior scientific and digital applied sciences to pick out websites, packages, and landscapes essential for biodiversity conservation, and group improvement as funding areas. They will even add their community of on-the-ground implementation capability and communications capabilities. CAF brings its huge expertise in sustainable improvement fashions and initiatives’ technical and monetary structuring as a part of its dedication to turn into the area’s inexperienced financial institution by financing local weather and biodiversity-friendly initiatives.
Modern funding mechanisms from non-public and public sources will assist this initiative. It’s a first step in direction of having built-in flyway-wide conservation, communications, monitoring, and the governance wanted to completely assist hemispheric conservation at scale for the good thing about birds, biodiversity, nature, and folks.ç
“Our flyways initiatives are sensible. It’s now past having extra discussions. It’s about implementing and placing concrete, verifiable motion behind phrases. We imagine in sustainable improvement based mostly on birds as indicators. We should mobilize severe quantities of cash if we’re to have a severe influence,” mentioned Patricia Zurita, BirdLfe Worldwide CEO. “That’s the reason we’re speaking about mobilizing as a lot as ten billion {dollars} between the 2 flyways within the subsequent twenty years. We’re dedicated to finance for nature that generates jobs, creates local weather resilience, and allows nature to be wholesome and sustainable. As we be taught rather a lot from our expertise in Asia, we’re constantly innovating. The truth that we now have the commitments of two regional banks is profoundly vital.”
Why birds?
Birds inform us that our survival will depend on a hemispheric answer to mitigate the results of local weather change and handle the biodiversity loss disaster. They’re probably the greatest indicator species for the well being of nature: extreme declines in chicken numbers are an early and grim warning about present and future threats biodiversity and folks will face.
In accordance with The Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC), limiting warming to round 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires international greenhouse gasoline emissions to be diminished by 43% by 2030. In parallel, due to human pressures, a million species could also be pushed to extinction within the subsequent few years, because the UN has acknowledged. This number of dwelling species makes up the security web supporting human life on Earth, offering meals, clear water, air, power, and constructing resilience to local weather change impacts.
The birds misplaced should not simply threatened or endangered migratory species however widespread and endemic birds. Large biodiversity loss is at our doorstep. From extra frequent and intense fires in California to the lack of snowpacks and glaciers within the Andes, extreme droughts in Chile and Peru, a rise within the quantity and depth of hurricanes within the Caribbean, and the ravaging progress of savannahs within the Amazon, communities, and persons are already experiencing the devastating impacts of local weather change and the destruction of nature.
Our collective scientific and modern financing fashions will empower conservation actions linking breeding, stopover, and wintering websites, and determine precedence websites for birds overlaid with Vital Chook Areas (IBAs) and Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs). Individuals-responsive options will vary from agroforestry in rural agricultural areas to inexperienced infrastructure driving coastal resilience in city cities.
“The partnership represents the best funding ever in chicken conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean and can contribute to integrating the area, international locations, and communities, from south to north, and migratory birds and their flyways will permit us to convey collectively all of the wanted parts. That is one among our flagship initiatives to advance our objective of turning into the inexperienced financial institution of Latin America and the Caribbean”, mentioned Sergio Díaz-Granados, Government President of CAF.
We’ve got seen the unimaginable connection birds could make and the way they carry collectively folks, communities, and efforts from a rising and broad number of public, multilateral, and personal organizations that perceive the essential second biodiversity and the way forward for humanity are dealing with. Now, for the primary time within the Western Hemisphere, an initiative addresses systematic points that have an effect on migratory chicken conservation. The Americas Flyways Initiative represents a real shift within the strategy to sustainable improvement and biodiversity safety. By bringing within the vital assets and technical know-how, we’ll reply to this urgent problem.
Collectively, we’re constructing the roadmap that reverses the immense lack of birds and biodiversity within the hemisphere. The ambition of the Americas Flyways Initiative and of those that worth the enjoyment of native and migratory birds is to convey again hope for the brand new generations.