The Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) and the German government, through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, have concluded a 14-year partnership during a three-day closing forumfrom March 19 to 21.
With the theme, “From Vision to Action: Celebrating 14 years of cooperation for Asean Biodiversity,’’ the forum highlighted the gains from the longstanding cooperation between ACB and GIZ, which started in 2010 with the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project.
The project was followed by the Biodiversity-based Products (BBP) as an Economic Source for the Improvement of Livelihoods and Biodiversity Protection Project, and the Institutional Strengthening of the Biodiversity (ISB) Sector in Asean I and II.
From 2010 to 2024, Germany has provided a total of €18 million for the four projects, €4 million of which was dedicated to the recently-concluded ISB II Project.
The ISB II Project significantly contributed to the regional institutional strengthening efforts at conserving natural resources by strengthening the organisational management of the ACB, the development of the Operations Manual of the Asean Heritage Parks (AHPs) Programme, flagship programme of the Asean on protected area management, facilitating joint Asean positions in international environment agreements, and mainstreaming biodiversity in the development sector.
“With a more strengthened ACB, you can all be assured that we will sustain the gains of this project, and will continue to scale up regional efforts for sustainable development. In the last three years, the ACB has mobilised more than $24 million from various sources—development and dialogue partners, private sector and multilateral funding entities, to support current and future regional level biodiversity projects,” ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim said in her speech.
She noted that such strategies borne out of the ACB-Germany cooperation translate into actions to effectively address climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, improve livelihoods, and engage stakeholders in various sectors through cross-pillar and multisectoral collaborations.
Germany’s Ambassador to the Philippines Andreas Michael Pfaffernoschke said in his welcome remarks that in the Asean region, Germany is currently supporting bilateral projects on biodiversity in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and regional projects together with the Asean Secretariat.
“In the Philippines alone, the German government supports projects on climate change and biodiversity conservation with over €50 million funding,” the ambassador said.
“Germany is committed to multilateral solutions to ensure the resilience of ecosystems and societies, and stability of the whole global order. Preserving biodiversity in Asean, therefore, is in all our global interests from economic, social, ecological, and moral perspectives,” he said in his speech at the ISB II closing forum.
Interviewed by the BusinessMirror, Pfaffernoschke said after 14 years, he is confident that ACB would be able to sustain the gains of the partnerships.
Through the projects that we are conducting here, “we are able to install the ACB, which has become the center of excellence in the whole region, and provided a lot of support to our Asean partners.”
“Beyond the end of this project, the ACB will stay and will continue its valuable work and this is a pride of the heiratge we are leaving behind,” the ambassador said.
“The partnership with ACB,” he said, comes to an end. “Now it will live on its own. It doesn’t mean that we are leaving, especially here in the Philippines. We have a huge portfolio for climate change and biodivesity here.”
“On a scale of 10, of course, I give it [ACB] a 10,” he said, confident that the milestone in protecting biodiversity will continue, saying that all the project goals were achieved during the 14-year partnership with ACB.
For her part, Lim said the coming days will not signal the end of a successful partnership but will only mark the beginning of more collaborative efforts for Asean biodiversity.
“Let this series of events allow us to reflect on how far we have achieved together, and explore how we can further scale up our cooperation for sustainability, building on the gains from this project’, Lim said.
She added that the ACB-GIZ partnership led to the current more robust and responsive organizational structure of the center, through ISB II’s support for its Comprehensive Institutional Review.
Under the new structure, the ACB’s priority program areas—namely, biodiversity conservation; knowledge management; capacity development; mainstreaming biodiversity; partnerships; communication, education, and public awareness—have been our primary approaches in meeting the new global biodiversity targets under the Biodiversity Plan and other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Director Ky-Anh Nguyen of the Sustainable Development Directorate of the Asean Secretariat expressed hopes the ACB-Germany partnership will continue to evolve and will build a broader list of partners from the government, private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders in Asean. championing biodiversity conservation and addressing the multifaceted global challenges, including climate change.
“We at the Asean Secretariat, commit to steadfast support for the work of the ACB and its partners, such as the government of Germany, and will continue to amplify the importance of well-balanced ecosystems and their proper management for sustainable economic development in the Asean region,” Nguyen said.