Iraq’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2015-2020).

This cross-cutting sectoral Strategy and Action Plan represents a national guiding framework for biodiversity conservation, with particular regard to a participatory approach that allows the actors for biodiversity in Iraq to work in partnership. It sets out priorities to focus on in the 5-year period 2015 – 2020. The main concepts at the basis of the Strategy are human life, awareness, sustainability and knowledge, as summarized in the Vision according to which ‘By 2050 Iraq has spread the knowledge and the awareness about biodiversity importance and uses its natural resources sustainably, for a better life for present and future generations’. Consequently, the Mission is to achieve better living conditions for Iraqi population by using and valuing biodiversity in a sustainable way. Main target groups of this NBSAP are the rural communities and those people living and depending on natural resources, with a particular reference to the tribal communities where biodiversity plays a role in the ethical, religious and social values.
The Strategy indicates 23 targets to be achieved within 2020 that can be summarized as follows: awareness of government and society (both urban and rural people) of the status of biodiversity, its benefits, the pressures that affect it, and the actions they can take for its conservation and sustainable use. The Strategy to reach these targets suggests: use of tools (i.e. films, publications, educational programs); reduce the pressures on biodiversity identifying the reasons for loss and degradation of each of the natural, semi-natural and human modified habitats and starting conservation actions; identify the main pressure on forest ecosystems and develop the proper legislation promoting sustainable management, restoration and conservation; restore deserted scrub-land areas; reduce pollution substances through the identification of the main sources, issuing environmental standards for the prevention and control together with the control on the introduction of non-native species and a list of the invasive ones; improve the status of biodiversity establishing protected areas, conducting training programs on the management, publishing a list of the threatened species and issuing the related legislation; promote a participatory planning and the traditional knowledge through a survey of indigenous and local communities' traditional knowledge, use and practices relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; promote a financial plan to find the necessary resources to implement the NBSAP.
The entire Strategy focuses on food security given that biodiversity underpins ecosystem functioning and the provisions of ecosystem services essential for human well-being. It provides for food security, human health, the provision of clean air and water, as expressed in the rationale of the Strategy itself.
In the field of the sustainable agriculture, fisheries and forestry, the Strategy aims to have by 2020: (i) areas under agriculture, aquaculture and forestry managed sustainably, ensuring conservation of biodiversity; (ii) the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and were feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced; (iii) all fish and invertebrate stocks and aquatic plants are managed and harvested sustainably, legally and applying ecosystems based approaches, so that overfishing is avoided, recovery plans and measures are in place for all depleted species, fisheries have no significant adverse impacts on threatened species and vulnerable ecosystems and the impact of fisheries on stocks, species and ecosystems are within safe ecological limits. All these targets are included in the goal aiming at achieving the reduction of the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use.
In order to make more inclusive the process of Strategy drafting, various stakeholders have been involved, starting from the national institutions and the scientific community up to the indigenous people, the NGOs and private companies and associations. Their level of involvement is identified as high, medium or low depending on the rate of impact on biodiversity issues.
The intervention in reducing the risk of environmental disasters contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation and to combating desertification consists in: by 2017 identify the desertified areas of Iraq, by comparison with historical data and evaluate the total surface of these lands and select, among all the inventoried desertified lands, 1000 Km² of ecologically valuable shrub land and grassland to be restored; by 2018 draft an action plan for restoration of the selected lands and by 2020 the action plan is on-going; amend, by 2018, existing legislation or develop a new regulation for the protection of lands from desertification risk and restoration of desertified lands, thereby providing special measures to protect restored lands; by the end of 2020 legislation to address the main pressures on forest ecosystems and native forest species is issued, promoting sustainable management, restoration and conservation. The general principle of this Strategy is that a better protection of biodiversity is a prudent and cost-effective investment in risk reduction for the global community.