The first African Protected Areas Congress (APAC) will convene in Nairobi, Kenya, from November 18-23.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, through its World Commission on Protected Areas, has partnered with Kenya’s Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife and a broad range of conservation groups to organise and facilitate the gathering.

The goal of APAC is to position Africa’s protected areas within the continent’s broader goals of sustainable development and community well-being and advance an agenda to create solutions for Africa’s conservation and livelihood challenges.

Two thousand delegates representing African countries, including political and community leaders, protected area practitioners, professionals from diverse fields, scholars, youth and stakeholders from private and public sectors, will discuss the protection of Africa’s resources.

The agenda will include addressing a new paradigm for protected areas, defining and advancing the role of governance, sustainable financing, capacity development, private and community conservation trends, conflicts, social equity, and benefit sharing.

The products and results of the congress will support the guiding vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 of an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa. Agenda 2063 is a 50-year strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the African continent.

APAC will also help develop and consolidate Africa’s input to the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, a product of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The CBD is an international treaty with three main goals: conservation of biodiversity; sustainable use of biodiversity; and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.

A Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 was developed under the CBD and now, groundwork is being laid for the next 30 years.