23 March 2011: The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is accepting nominations of participants for two capacity-building workshops for West Africa, taking place in Dakar, Senegal, from 22-26 May 2011. One of the parallel workshops will focus on implementation of the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA), and the other will address updating and revision of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) for West African countries.

The objective of the Protected Areas workshop is to build capacity to: create a national action plan for implementing the Programme of Work; access funding based on these action plans; and strengthen implementation of the Programme of Work on the themes of governance, climate change (including integrating protected areas into the wider land and seascape), sustainable financing, and valuation of the costs and benefits of protected areas, with a focus on marine protected areas where applicable. The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Conservation of Senegal, the Regional Program for Conservation of the Marine and Coastal Zones of West Africa, and the PoWPA Friends Consortium.

The purpose of the NBSAPs workshop is to: strengthen national capacities for the development, implementation, review, updating and communication of NBSAPs; help facilitate national implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020; and translate the Post-2010 Strategic Plan into national targets and commitments.

Nominations for both workshops are invited from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. For the Protected Areas workshop, nominations should be submitted to the CBD Secretariat by 8 April 2011. Nominations for the NBSAPs workshop are invited by 5 April 2011. [CBD Notification on Protected Areas Workshop] [CBD Notification on NBSAPs Workshop]