RECALLING that the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20, 2012) recognised the importance of the three Rio Conventions to advancing sustainable development and urged Parties to fully implement their commitments;

RECALLING paragraph 198 of the Rio+20 outcome document, which reiterates nations’ commitment to the achievement of the three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and calls for urgent actions that effectively reduce the rate of, halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity;

NOTING that in decision 14/29 of the 14th Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the CBD (COP14, Egypt, 2018), the Parties recognised the need to strengthen their implementation and commitments to achieve the 2050 Vision of CBD;

NOTING the report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Geographic Society, International Symposium on Biodiversity Sciences held in Beijing, China, in June 2019, which proposes moving from generalised global targets to national commitments to improve the measurement of conservation progress;

ALSO NOTING the differing biodiversity status and varying protection goals among Parties of developed and developing countries, Small Island Developing States, as well as countries with economies in transition;

NOTING that in COP14 decision 14/5, the Parties to CBD recognised the interaction and synergy between the two issues of biodiversity and climate change, and encouraged Parties to integrate national priorities for each issue into national strategies and action plans for both, including the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC);

FURTHER NOTING that the CBD report Synthesis of views on the scope and content of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (CBD/POST2020/PREP/1/INF/1) indicates that there were discussions on the desirability of voluntary commitments, and proposed to develop a process to incorporate voluntary contribution into National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and other national and sub-national planning; and

WELCOMING the draft recommendation on ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (CBD/WG2020/2/L.2/Add.1) submitted by the Co-Chairs of the Open-ended Working Group on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework;