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Nature Commitments Platform

NGOs biodiversity citizen engagement conservation digital platform

The Nature Commitments Platform was launched by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2022 and aims to raise awareness and inspire action by non-government organisations, local communities, and businesses to protect, sustainably manage, and restore areas of land and water .

The site is created by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), in partnership with the Government of the Netherlands and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This logbook provides more detail about its development and relation to the Verified Conservation Area (VCA) initiative.

Area-Based Nature Commitments

The Nature Commitments Platform showcases more than 220 ongoing area-based conservation pledges and encourages other organisations to upload their own commitments. Any non-state level organisation can share their projects and the interactive map allows users to browse through uploaded initiatives.

Through this project, the platform aims to draw attention to the role of civil society such as local authorities, Indigenous peoples, local communities, and businesses can play in achieving conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity . Besides sharing successful engagements, by enabling organisations to upload their own commitments, the platform seeks to showcase ongoing attempts at biodiversity restoration or preservation. This raises interesting questions about the role of digital platforms to be either critical or encouraging in enabling organisations (such as local initiatives, but also businesses) to formulate their biodiversity pledges.

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Screenshot of the nature committments platform interactive map, retrieved on June 10, 2024 via https://naturecommitments.org/home

Verified Conservation Areas

The Verified Conservation Area initiative is a is a digital infrastructure that aimed to create a transparent method for verifying biodiversity restoration and conservation, where both larger companies as well as local grassroots initiatives could declare their biodiversity efforts. Two forthcoming Atlas Radio episodes provide more details about this project, including their challenges in obtaining funding : the episode with Artur Eijs, Policy advisor on Natural Resources, at the Ministry for Infrastructure & Water management in the Netherlands , and the episode with conservation economist Dr. Frank Vorhies.

This starting initiative was eventually discontinued, mainly due to the difficulties in obtaining funding. The project offered a plan for how biodiversity can be quantified and conceptualised as area-based to connect it to economic incentives and initiatives. Digital platforms play a big role in these projects, as they provide the infrastructure through which biodiversity data can allegedly be made transparent. These types of project raise new questions on the advantages and disadvantages of biodiversity offsetting .

The VCA projects that were part of this initiative, including the biodiversity plan of Ecodorp Boekel, one of the case study sites for the Smart Forests project subsequently became part of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Nature Commitments Platform and can be accessed via: https://naturecommitments.org/

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The VCA logo, retrieved on June 10, 2024 via https://capitalscoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Earth-Mind-VCA-Approach-NC-Asset-June2016.pdf

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