PANORAMA at the CBD COP 13 in Cancún, Mexico: Creating dialogue, expanding the partnership

Story 12 Dec, 2016

PANORAMA at the CBD COP 13 in Cancún, Mexico: Creating dialogue, expanding the partnership

Following the launch of the new PANORAMA platform at the recent ��ϲʿ��ֳ�ֱ�� World Conservation Congress, the partnership and web platform is growing and expanding. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s 13th��Conference of the Parties (CBD COP13) in Cancún, Mexico, provided the stage for two PANORAMA side events, including the official launch of the 3rd��thematic portal, which profiles “Ecosystem-based Adaptation Solutions”, on 6��December.

Photo: Photo by IISD/ENB | Francis Dejon

Cutting the ribbon during the official launch of the third thematic portal of the PANORAMA platform (left to right: Arno Sckeyde, GIZ; Harald Lossack, GIZ; Tanja Gönner, GIZ; Trevor Sandwith, ��ϲʿ��ֳ�ֱ��; Elsa Nickel, BMUB; Ignacio March, CONANP; Ilona Porsché, GIZ) /

Tanja Gönner, CEO of GIZ and Trevor Sandwith, Director of ��ϲʿ��ֳ�ֱ��’s Global Protected Areas Programme, represented the two PANORAMA managing institutions. Mrs. Gönner noted that “PANORAMA��is an efficient knowledge management system, intended for both practitioners and decision-makers”. Mr Sandwith added that “the partnership aims to identify replicable core components of successful approaches and feed them into a searchable global database, in such way as to connect people around success stories and scale them up”.

The Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA)��portal was launched in the Rio Conventions Pavilion with a countdown and a ceremonial “cutting of the ribbon”. The thematic host for this portal is . It��complements��the existing portals��on “protected area solutions” and “marine and coastal solutions”. It is also the first portal that is opened after the launch of the new PANORAMA platform. PANORAMA will continuously expand to cover further thematic portals that showcase integrated solutions for nature conservation and development goals. All PANORAMA portals are open to anyone for sharing their success stories as “solution” case studies.

A second��PANORAMA side event featured interventions by representatives of all PANORAMA managing and development partners, as well as a lively debate with some “solution providers”.

Dr. Elsa Nickel, Director General for Nature Conservation & Sustainable Use of Nature at the German Environment Ministry (BMUB), said she “welcomed that over 250 institutions have already contributed solutions. It is important to reflect what does not, as well as what does work”.

Claude Gascon, Manager with the��Programs Unit at the Global Environment Facility (), noted that “this knowledge-sharing approach requires far less resources than replicating projects, but equally has the potential to disseminate successes more widely”.

Elisa López,��from the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, welcomed PANORAMA’s “building blocks” approach, noting it had allowed four countries working on the Mesoamerican Reef region to share solutions and ideas.

Some of the points raised by participants in the discussion related to how to ensure a project is replicable in a certain context and opportunities for linking with other initiatives.��

The conference��also saw the launch of Rare’s Solution Search “Farming for Biodiversity”,��a global contest to find biodiversity-friendly agricultural solutions, in which PANORAMA is proud to be a partner.

PANORAMA is very relevant to the theme of this year’s CBD COP “Mainstreaming biodiversity for well-being”: To achieve mainstreaming of biodiversity into sectoral policies, dialogue between different constituencies is needed. PANORAMA enables such dialogue by being based on a broad and growing partnership and promoting cross-thematic learning from success.