Green cafe organized for Kazakh media on biodiversity

UNDP experts organized a green café for the media in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana on 20 July 2017 and talked about measures of the UNDP and the Kazakh Government on expanding of protected areas, creating ecological corridors for saigas and koulans, expanding the range of the Asiatic poplar tree in Kazakhstan. UNDP experts also told the media about the Eco-Damu microfinance programme designed for people living in and around protected areas in order to create jobs and mitigate human impact on biodiversity.

Special attention was paid to the introduction of financing instruments in preserving biodiversity, payments for ecosystem services (PES), compensation for the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem as a result of economic and other human activities as well as subsides, tax preferences. The media learned about the conversation and use of biodiversity as priority areas in the implementation by Kazakhstan of the Concept for Conversation and Sustainable Use of the Biological Diversity in the country.

Financial solutions such as PES and biodiversity offsets are new in the Kazakh practice of biological resources management. The BIOFIN team in Kazakhstan convenes various dialogue platforms in order to communicate the new financial and economic mechanisms.