CPW

It was in 2010 that the idea of a collaborative partnership on wildlife first emerged during discussions at the CIC Headquarters. Jan Heino, former Assistant Director General of the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), seeing the potential in the CIC, asked the CIC Director General, who was at that time Kai Wollscheid, to develop a framework for this initiative. Jan Heino successfully chaired the Collaborative Partnership on Forests for several years, which serves as a model for this partnership.

This idea was then planted by the CIC Director General Tamás Marghescu into the system of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD, as a multilateral environmental agreement, provided a perfect forum to spread the idea. The initiative was first discussed at the 15th meeting of The Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) from 7-11 November 2011 in Montreal, Canada, and the results were formulated as a Recommendation XV/6 on the Sustainable use of biodiversity. In the text, the SBSTTA requested the CBD Executive Secretary to “explore options for the development of a collaborative partnership on sustainable wildlife management to enhance cooperation and coordination for implementation of the recommendations of the Liaison Group on Bushmeat, and to report to the Conference of the Parties at its eleventh meeting.”

The CIC also strengthened the support within its own rows. In May 2012, the 59th CIC General Assembly met in Cape Town, South Africa, and adopted a resolution on the Collaborative Partnership on Wildlife Conservation (CICGA59.RES01) requesting support from its members, especially the CIC Executive Committee and suggested “that instead of limiting the partnership geographically to tropical and subtropical countries and thematically to the issues of bushmeat only, as suggested by the CBD, the CPWC should have a wider global scope and a broader thematic framework.” This idea was also stressed in different other international fora, where this collaborative partnership was discussed.