All sectors that influence biodiversity should help plan its conservation

If biodiversity conservation is to expand beyond the traditional agenda--protected areas, programs to protect individual species, and ex situ conservation--then this broader mandate must be reflected in national biodiversity planning. All affected sectors and groups should get to present their views and priorities, and they should be held accountable for how their activities and investments affect the country's biodiversity.

Biodiversity planning must involve bottom-up and participatory negotiations, and priorities must be set at a bioregional level.

Although coordination among national government agencies is essential for effective biodiversity planning, many other actors and interests depend on biodiversity, influence it, possess valuable knowledge about it, and possess perspectives different from those of central government agencies. Because hard choices must be made in biodiversity planning, negotiation and compromise are essential. Effective negotiation and compromise among all stakeholders take time and cost money, and the process of coming to terms is likely to be initially contentious. But there is no other way to develop a plan that is truly national, and that has a hope of being implemented. Moreover, the interests and viewpoints of particular "bioregions" within the country need to be directly represented in all national planning for biodiversity conservation. As a practical matter, once broad national goals are set, state or provincial planning meetings are needed to flesh out the actions to achieve those goals.

The ultimate planning authority for biodiversity conservation should rest within agencies with real power.

Where the locus of biodiversity planning is a relatively weak agency, plans rarely work. Conversely, effective planning requires leadership by one or more agencies with real power to allocate resources and set national priorities. For this reason, agencies charged with managing protected areas, forestry, or wildlife may not be the most suitable political center of biodiversity planning, even though they will certainly be important participants. Rather, ministries or departments of planning or finance--or those with equivalent power--should catalyze biodiversity planning, capitalizing on their proven ability to elicit cross-sectoral cooperation.

Biodiversity planners must set clear objectives and priorities.

Part of effective biodiversity planning is deciding what not to do. Financial, human, and institutional resources for biodiversity conservation are limited, and a lengthy "wish list" of everything that might be done with unlimited resources is no plan at all. Effective biodiversity planning begins with the elaboration of national objectives derived from broad-based participation and consultation. Once a consensus forms on objectives, practical priorities can be set along with corollary priorities for policy reform, legal change, institutional fortification, human resources development, and investments in the field.

Policy reform and institutional change must be the central elements of biodiversity planning.

Most national environmental planning exercises focus excessively on developing projects for investment and getting them into the national plan. However, no biodiversity conservation investment or project should be approved until the policies and institutions that influence it are scrutinized. Indeed, concrete plans for eliminating or reducing policy weaknesses and institutional problems must be part of the plan. Since planning is too often equated with haggling over how to spend money, a focus on policy and institutional reform must be explicitly written into the legal terms of reference for biodiversity planning and championed by the agencies and individuals leading the planning.

The full range of conservation techniques and technologies must be considered in developing biodiversity conservation plans.

No single tool--be it national parks, zoos, agro-forestry, or seed banks--can meet all the objectives of biodiversity conservation. Quite the contrary, the full range of options must be systematically considered in developing national biodiversity action plans. Traditionally, however, in-situ and ex-situ conservation techniques have been developed, deployed, and managed piecemeal by separate agencies and private institutions. As a result, there is little shared understanding of the advantages and limitations of each approach, and the various approaches are not used to support each other's objectives.

Biodiversity conservation planning exercises must include systematic attention to implementation

Environmental planning and "national plans" of any sort have earned a bad name among those eager for swift, effective action. All too frequently, elaborate plans languish forgotten on the shelf. Lack of political sponsorship and broad participation may be to blame, or lack of attention to implementation capacity, or both. Implementation issues get overlooked partly because institutions' formal mandates are often confused with their true operating capacities. Ministries of forestry in many countries, for example, are legally responsible for managing vast portions of public forest estate, but do not actually plant or harvest many trees. Similarly, many non-governmental organizations may have a deeply held commitment to, say, fostering community empowerment or conserving habitats but lack the wherewithal needed to do the job properly. Institutions involved in biodiversity planning must honestly evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. They must be prepared to shoulder more--or less--authority and responsibility where circumstances dictate and decide how to strengthen their roles in implementing the biodiversity conservation plan.

Mechanisms for monitoring implementation must be built into the planning process.

Monitoring implementation is essential. A program for evaluation must be clearly defined and the plan must include milestones and criteria for measuring success. Ongoing evaluation not only ensures implementation, it also provides the feedback needed to improve the plan in response to changing circumstances and new data. Implementation depends not only on the commitment of real programs and funds by governments, but also on citizen participation. Just as keen public interest is necessary at the front end of a planning exercise, citizens are also needed as "watchdogs" as the plan is implemented.