Israel’s National Biodiversity Plan.

Israel's National Biodiversity Plan (Plan) is the result of the country's commitment under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and out of a government decision on a Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development in Israel. It’s a cross-sectoral plan with national coverage which entered into force in 2010. The Plan aims to complement the Israeli government decision on sustainable development, by serving as a master plan for advancing its timely implementation in light of evident adverse environmental trends that affect human well-being at both the global and Israeli scales.
The Plan includes guidelines for biodiversity management at the local level as well as the national planning scale. It also addresses the need for adopting economic incentives, advancing research, promoting education and information, encouraging legislation and its enforcement, and actively engaging in the international arena of biodiversity conservation. All these constitute a package of measures for advancing conservation and thus securing the functionality of the Israeli biodiversity in providing services to the people of Israel. The Plan identifies the dangers and threats to Israel's biodiversity and outlines ways of confronting them by implementing responsive methodologies for managing biodiversity and the ecosystems that host it. These methods derive from updated knowledge generated by the science of ecology, but assisted by regional planning tools which internalize the needs of development for ecosystem services. The Plan identifies the legal instruments still missing for its enforcement, evaluates economic incentives for implementing the plan at the various levels, and encourages education and increased public awareness to replace the need for enforcement. The plan also identifies gaps in the research required for appropriate biodiversity and ecosystem management and proposes measures for closing these gaps. Above all, the Plan seeks to find the appropriate management tools to conserve the maximal number of Israeli species and to maintain each in a population size compatible with the needs for optimal provision of ecosystem services.
The Plan will be implemented by the different government ministries to advance Israel's social and economic practice in accordance with sustainable development principles, thus ensuring the well-being of its people.