CBD research needs

The CBD in its different thematic programmes of work as well as in programmes to cross-cutting issues formulates research needs in a more or less explicit way in the goals and actions of the respective programmes. In order to facilitate the recognition of the research needs a study undertaken by the Institute for Biodiversity - Network e.V. for the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation highlights the research needs expressed in all the programmes of work as formulated in the COP Decisions under the CBD.
For that purpose, 314 Decisions of all 14 COP meetings held so far were checked for passages that express research needs. These 314 Decisions include all Decisions that are mentioned under the respective headings of the issues on the CBD web pages.

The CBD research needs are listed in tables

The results are presented in tables along the topics of the CBD programmes. All citations are linked to the original decisions where the text was taken from. The author of the study did not bring in any personal views, all citations are original CBD texts.

The following tables are available:

 

The study finalized in 2019 includes all decisions of the so far 14 COP meetings, i.e. the most recent decisions are those from COP 14 (2018 in Sharm El-Sheikh/Egypt).

How to read the tables:

All 29 tables for thematic and cross-cutting issues are built according to the following scheme:

  • The chapeau gives a very short introduction to the issues and includes the link to the respective introductory page of the CBD web pages. The chapeau also lists the Decisions from which text expressing research needs is cited as well as those Decisions that are relevant for the respective issue and therefore were checked but where no research needs were found.
  • For each citation the first columns of the table name the Decision and the respective para or annex/appendix where the text is cited from. The column ‘Chapeau / Heading’ gives the heading of the respective annex (e.g. Bonn Guidelines) or the beginning of the sentence that is cited (e.g. The Conference of the Parties urges Parties to…).
  • The last column of the table gives the link to the respective COP Decision.
  • Highlighting of passages in bold letters is done by the author of the study to identify those parts of the sentences that are most relevant to research.
  • The table is divided into two sections: the first section cites text that expresses research needs explicitly (direct research needs), the second section cites text that mentions research needs implicitly (indirect research needs).
  • In each section the citations are listed in chronological order of their existence. The oldest Decisions therefore are cited first. This was done because more recent Decisions in many cases build upon or even directly repeat text from former Decisions and would be not understandable without knowledge of these older Decisions.