CREAF at the COP17 on Biodiversity, where to meet and what will we follow?

A delegation of eight people from CREAF, made up of research, management and leadership staff, will travel between Tuesday and Thursday to the seventeenth COP on Biodiversity, which will be held from 19 to 30 October in Yerevan, Armenia. The Conference of the Parties organised by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to reverse the destruction of nature and the loss of habitats and species worldwide . To do this, just as the COP on Climate is governed by the Paris Agreement, this convention follows the Kunning Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its 23 indicators.

At this COP, CREAF travels with several hats, on the one hand, that of contributing its scientific voice, on the other, that of advising governments and key partners and, finally, that of carrying out institutional work of relations with key global entities or alliances that work, among others, in the Mediterranean area.

On the research side, CREAF is committed to European projects of which it is a partner and which are aimed precisely at this science-policy interface in the field of biodiversity. These projects, such as Biodiversa + , Bioagora , MECEMB or RESPIN , have organised events during COP17 to present preliminary results or participate in debates. All of them are working from various perspectives to solve this crisis, for example by standardising data when monitoring species or habitats, improving the transfer of knowledge from science to people who design and apply public biodiversity policies, exchanging knowledge between regions that have similar challenges or studying the links that biodiversity has with other challenges, such as climate change.

On the other hand, CREAF has had a Political Interaction and Institutional Relations Area for two years now that works to establish connections with governments and public administrations, or with alliances that represent these groups, and offer them scientific advice. In this sense, during this COP, CREAF will also wear the government hat as scientific advisors to the Government of Catalonia. We will offer scientific advice on site to the Catalan delegation, follow the negotiations, resolve queries and support the events in which they participate. According to Alicia Pérez-Porro, head of the Political Interaction and Institutional Relations Area, "once we return, we will publish a report to convey the decisions taken to the different government bodies and we will organize a joint return session with them to be able to explain to all the people who have not been able to come where future policies should be oriented", she explains.

This task also extends to other entities, such as Regions4, an international network that represents subnational governments like Catalonia before global organizations, such as the CBD in this case. Pérez-Porro highlights the importance of providing this territorial and regional perspective.

Likewise, CREAF also advises the Spanish Government itself, with which it shares a new FECYT R&D project to help them in the more technical part related to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the CBD itself.

Finally, CREAF is also visiting the COP as an expert research centre in Mediterranean ecosystems, ecosystems that are suffering much more acutely from the effects of climate change, invasive species or other drivers of biodiversity loss such as urbanisation. Thus, during the COP, CREAF will present a report that it has led and that it has produced within the framework of the Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership (MCAP), a global alliance of subnational governments from regions with a Mediterranean climate on five continents. Within this alliance, grants have been awarded to produce reports that are useful for sharing knowledge and solutions, and among them, CREAF has produced a report that compares how drought, heat waves and fires are affecting the nature of Catalonia and California, and how the two regions are coping with them. The report looks for solutions that can be adapted from one region to another, knowledge gaps and ways of legislating and making decisions that can be effective in each place.