What is the National Biodiversity Strategy?
Biodiversity has many dimensions, and the importance of these has still not been adequately addressed. It provides, among other things, resources including all our food and many medicines and other life support products. Biodiversity underpins human well-being through the provision of ecological services that are, for instance, essential for nutrient cycling, soil fertility and fruit-tree pollination as well as clean, fresh water and air. It also provides a wide range of recreational opportunities, and it is an inexhaustible resource for learning, education, inspiration and cultural identity. Biodiversity conservation is therefore a common concern for all of humankind.
The Strategy is the Belgian answer to the formal obligation under the CBD and also takes the other commitments made at European and international level into account. It offers a framework for policymaking and further development of actions. It includes the existing Regional and Federal frameworks and action plans, and it supports their integration and fine-tuning. It aims at giving strategic political orientations in order to allow actors for biodiversity in Belgium to work in partnership to contribute nationally and internationally towards the achievement of the target of halting the loss of biodiversity.
The Strategy pays particular attention to creating more coherence and filling the gaps in existing Belgian instruments and optimising integration of biodiversity concern at national and international level. This unique national document on biodiversity policy embraces the responsibilities of the different governments in Belgium.In Belgium, environmental matters including nature conservation are essentially matters of Regional competence. The Federal level is competent for environmental matters in the marine areas under Belgian jurisdiction, military domains and railway embankments, it has specific environmental competences (CITES, trade of non-indigenous species, product standards) and other competences related to the environment and biodiversity (development cooperation, finance, economy, etc.) at its disposal as well as action levers (public procurements, taxation, etc.).
The Biodiversity 2020, Update of Belgium’s National Strategy publication is available only in electronic version and can be downloaded in various languages from this page. The text is available in English, French, Dutch and German. A general information brochure in EN / FR / NL / DE may be ordered by mail at nfp-cbd@naturalsciences.be.
If you would like to know more about the last version of the strategy and the process of its update, please have look here.