The National Environment Service (NES) will be seeking the public’s, government agencies and non-governmental organisations’ perspectives on plans to update the Cook Islands National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).

The original NBSAP which was developed in 2002 under the leadership of Gerald McCormack is over two decades old and environmental challenges have evolved over the years hence the need to upgrade the plan in order to reflect the current needs and aspirations of the communities.

Karen Silk, the NBSAP project coordinator for NES, told Cook Islands News that the idea was to respond effectively to the new challenges that have occurred over the years since the original plan was launched.

“We’ve went over the current NBSAP which is now 20 years old so we’re in the process of updating that because there’s been a few crucial areas in 20 years that had changed and so we’re looking at how to respond to those challenges from the community’s perspective as well as from the government’s perspective,” Silk said.

“We’ll be holding some community workshops so that the public can put in their views and opinions on how to protect our biodiversity.”

Silk urged the public to participate in what she believes is everyone’s responsibility to prevent biodiversity loss.

“Biodiversity is really everyone’s responsibility so we really strongly encourage everyone to participate in these workshops because it’s really important that they put in their views and we want their views in how we can combat biodiversity loss and protection of our environment and our species,” she said.

“Because we’ve got some endemic species that are unique just to the Cook Islands and to Rarotonga and we want to protect those for the future generations and it’s up to the whole community and society to put their views so that we can work together for biodiversity loss.”

As part of the preparatory activities for this review, NES held two successful workshops earlier this month which brought together key stakeholders including conservation practitioners, policymakers and representatives from both government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The discussions centered on aligning the updated NBSAP with national policies and the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) identifying priority targets and establishing a dedicated working group to guide and oversee the revision process.