7 November 2002: Biodiversity and the Millennium Development Goals: Opportunities and Challenges from Johannesburg Seminar, New York, USA

On November 7, 2002, a meeting was organized by UNDP, the Equator Initiative and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to explore the relationship between biodiversity within the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) framework and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a view to maintaining momentum after the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

It was attended by representatives from UN agencies, Government, and civil society including NGOs and Academia. Presentations were made on the new opportunities resulting from WSSD and WEHAB to advance issues of biodiversity at local, national and global levels towards achieving the MDGs by Charles McNeill of UNDP; on the role of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in efforts to integrate biodiversity in the MDGs by Joy Hyvarinen of RSPB; and on where biodiversity fits within the work undertaken by the UN Millennium Project by Guido Schmidt-Traub of the UN Millennium Project. The presentations were followed by a discussion on identifying specific steps the biodiversity community will need to take to seize these new opportunities and have an impact in the realization of the MDGs.