The IUCN 2025 World Conservation Congress has come to a close now with around 150 motions discussed and adopted as resolutions. Some key resolutions for Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) were: A. motion 80 on the need for companies to measure and disclose their impacts at a species level as well as at an ecosystem level (Supported by 87% of government and 86% of conservation partner members of IUCN); B. Motion 129 on conservation of the high seas which calls on all nations to identify KBAs here; C. Motion 27 to establish a marine conservation area in Macaronesia that calls on KBAs to be updated in this region; D. Motion 75 urging a scaling up of investment to conserve amphibians, focusing on KBAs; E. Motion 91 encouraging the identification of KBAs for fungi and invertebrates to improve their conservation; and Motion 127 urging the identification of KBAs important for connectivity areas.
It was clear to me that KBAs are becoming much more widely known and our booth at the event attracted a lot of attention, particularly from government representatives keen to find out more about KBAs. As a result of being the first country in the Middle East to make a comprehensive assessment of their KBAs, the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment of the United Arab Emirates translated and launched the first Arabic version of the KBA Standard together with an Arabic translation of the KBA Guidelines and committed to encouraging KBA identification and conservation across the Arab world. Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia already have formed KBA National Coordination Groups and are working on updating their KBA networks.
We also highlighted the paper recently published in Conservation Biology that shows that if a comprehensive KBA update is made on average the KBA network is doubled in size (bit.ly/47bwXRA). Countries that haven’t made such an update are effectively missing half their KBAs and we made a call on all countries to update their networks. Many showed an interest to do so when visiting the KBA booth.
Photo of launch of Arabic KBA Standard and Guidelines at UAE Pavilion