RESPONSE | THE ACTIONS NEEDED TO CONSERVE BIRDS AND BIODIVERSITY
THE IMPORTANCE OF INFLUENCING POLICY AND LEGISLATION While individual conservation projects are important, laws and environmental policy set the wider framework into which all conservation efforts fit. Reform of legislation and environmental policy, while often challenging to accomplish, can therefore have more far-reaching consequences than work that is focused on a single site or a single species. Even where strong policy commitments exist, advocacy and monitoring are often essential to ensure that they are properly implemented. 68 BirdLife is working to ensure that energy developments do not negatively impact birds and other wildlife. PHOTO Nick Upton (rspb-images.com).
CASE STUDY 53
International collaboration to reconcile renewable energy and migratory species It is vital that we transition from fossil fuels to low
Reconciling Selected Energy Sector Developments
carbon sources of energy as quickly as possible
with Migratory Species Conservation�. Known
in order to escape the worst ravages of climate
simply as the Energy Task Force, it provides
change. In doing so, we must avoid creating new
a platform where government ministries,
hazards for wildlife, such as those caused by siting
conservation organisations, international financial
wind turbines in areas where they pose a collision
institutions and the energy sector can collaborate
risk to vulnerable migratory birds. Meeting this
to identify and implement solutions for sustainable,
challenge is now a key objective of the Convention
wildlife-friendly, renewable energy development.
on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild
As a global expert on the impacts of renewable
Animals (CMS), an environmental treaty under the
energy on wildlife, with a vast network of local
aegis of UN Environment. At the meeting of the
Partners around the world, BirdLife is playing a
CMS Parties in 2014, a resolution was adopted
central role in this important initiative.
to establish “a multi-stakeholder Task Force on