ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
The healthy ecosystems that have provided Canadians with benefits that include clean water and air, fish, climate regulation and recreational opportunities are under threat. Urbanization and industrial activity is placing growing pressures on the country’s landscapes and waterways, which, in turn, puts the number, health and viability of many essential ecosystems at risk. In dealing with this challenge, Stratos believes that Canada has an opportunity to not only improve its performance in ecosystem management but to become a world leader in adopting the ecosystem approach and protecting biodiversity.
Access and Benefit Sharing Management Tool (ABS-MT) >
Ecosystem Services
Guided by the understanding that sustainability issues cannot be addressed in isolation, Stratos is helping its clients integrate ecosystem management into their programs and sustainability activities through ecosystem issue analysis and planning, biodiversity indicator development, and reviewing and evaluating programs and institutions with a focus on ecosystem and biodiversity management.
Access and Benefit Sharing Management Tool (ABS-MT)
From 2003 to 2007, in cooperation with the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Jorge Cabrera, and on behalf of the Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Stratos designed and developed the Access and Benefit Sharing Management Tool (ABS-MT). The ABS-MT is a best practice standard and a handbook that provides guidance and tools on ABS practice to help companies, researchers, local and indigenous communities, and governments ensure compliance with the Bonn Guidelines and ABS requirements under the Convention on Biological Diversity. It provides users and providers of genetic resources with a structured process for participating in—and making decisions about—ABS negotiations and the implementation of ABS agreements for access to and agreed use of genetic resources.
Since its publication in 2007, the ABS-MT has been used as a key capacity building instrument by the ABS Capacity Development Initiative for Africa and by several countries throughout Latin America and Africa.
The ABS-MT is can be downloaded for free in English, French and Spanish from: http://www.iisd.org/abs/
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