On March 29, 2012, exchange meeting on implementation progress of China Biodiversity Partnership and Framework for Action (CBPF) Programme was held in Beijing. Ye Jianxin, Director of the International Department of the Ministry of Finance, Cai Lei, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Li Pei, deputy director of Foreign Economic Cooperation Office of MEP, Mr. Carsten Germer, Division Chief of United Nations Development Programme, and Mr. Lopez Alvin, specialist of Asian Development Bank attended the meeting and delivered speeches. A total of 57 representatives on behalf of 39 work units from Beijing, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai, including International Implementing Agencies, domestic management bodies and local execution agencies of nine projects under the CBPF framework, together with experts from the five Outcome Teams of Priority Institutional Strengthening and Capacity Development (IS) Project were also present at the meeting.

Madam Li Pei pointed out in her speech that Year 2012 is significant in the way that it is the 20th anniversary since the Convention on Biological Diversity came into being and the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Summit on Environment and Development as well as the 2nd year of NBSAP implementation; She added that China would also kick off its action plan to implement “the UN Decade for Diversity” with the establishment of the National Committee for China Biodiversity Conservation, all these have paved the way for CBPF to achieve progress and success in upcoming years.
Madam Li Pei called for coordination of efforts among nine projects under the CBPF to build “partnership”, irrespective of current obstacles such as disparities in execution territory, project life cycles and implementation bodies. Synergy was again highlighted by Madam Li and the IS Project become “more service-oriented” to promote such partnership. Madam Ye required in her speech that all nine projects should have a holistic picture of the whole CBPF framework and work in the spirit of partnership to increase efficiency and synergy by strengthening communication, sharing information and resources for achieving expanded publicity and enlarged social impact in the future.

Dr. Cai Lei emphasized the significance for the projects to carry out activities under the guidance of the National Committee and reiterated the importance of nine projects’ coordinated communication and implementation efforts within the CBPF framework. Mr. Carsten Germer mentioned that the meeting had gained quite some attention from the UNDP and hoped that the meeting would lay a foundation for a strengthened mechanism to be in place for better communication among these inseparable nine partner projects.

Mr. Lopez Alvin pointed out as one of the international implementing agencies of GEF, ADB attaches great importance to biodiversity and would continue to be concerned about and actively participate in the building of CBPF partnership framework.

Participants on the meeting listened to the nine projects progress reports, discussed& approved in principle the establishment of three mechanisms for inter-project synergy and resource sharing, communication on a regular basis and joining efforts in publicity.

Participants also provided constructive feedback to how the CBPF Programme Steering Committee (PSC) should be established and the contents of “Initiative on Partnership for Biodiversity Conservation”.

The inter-project exchange meeting on implementation progress is the first of its kind so far but produced good results as expected, such as gathering all nine projects and unifying the understanding of projects under the same framework of CBPF as well as other commonly interesting issues. The meeting was meant to serve the purposes of providing guiding principle for the CBPF framework as a whole and for these nine individual but inseparable partner project and will expectedly contribute to effective coordinated inter-projects efforts in sharing information and resources as well as knowledge management.  The meeting was widely deemed to have achieved desired results.