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National Biodiversity Action Plan Audit 2021

National Biodiversity Action Plan Audit 2021

Date: 16 Feb 2021

The National Biodiversity Forum audit of the Interim Review of Ireland's National Biodiversity Action Plan.

Minister for Heritage and Electoral Reform has welcomed the publication of a new independent review of Ireland’s third National Biodiversity Action Plan 2017-2021. The review was conducted by the Biodiversity Forum, a group of biodiversity experts from across academia, NGO, public and private sectors, whose role is to provide independent monitoring of progress of the implementation of the National Biodiversity Action Plan, highlighting progress and bottlenecks, and providing progress reports to the Minister for Heritage.

The Forum suggested that the Government can use the SDGs and the Climate Action Units established in some departments as frameworks for mainstreaming biodiversity across policy and beyond and that this should be complemented by establishing a cross-party working group on biodiversity. They have called for the extension of, and increased linkages between, protected areas to address migrations due to climate change.

They have also sought for Government to stimulate and facilitate cross-disciplinary research between biodiversity, climate, water and economics. They state that nature and biodiversity can play a central role in achieving national and sub-national net-zero carbon targets.

Link to the report of the National Biodiversity Forum

The report is an outcome of a workshop that the group undertook in late 2020, which was funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage as part of the 2019 'Seeds for Nature' initiative in order to provide independent advice to Government. Minister Noonan committed to more than doubling funding to the Biodiversity Forum from €10,000 per annum to €25,000 per annum in order to further support its work.