Creation of the Working Group

At the 10^th meeting of the CMS Conference of the Parties (COP10) in Bergen, it was decided in Resolution 10.5 to establish a Working Group to draft the new  Strategic Plan for Migratory Species for the period 2015-2023, to be submitted to CMS COP11 for consideration and adoption.

In adopting the Strategic Plan for Migratory Species 2015-2023, COP11 acknowledged the need for additional inter-sessional work to strengthen the suite of materials to support implementation of the Strategic Plan, including:

a)                  indicators for the Strategic Plan for Migratory Species, drawing as far as possible from existing work, such as that under the global Biodiversity Indicators Partnership; and

b)                 a Companion Volume on Implementation for the new Strategic Plan, based on available tools, to provide guidance on implementation of the Plan.

COP11 also decided to extend the mandate of the Strategic Plan Working Group to include the tasks of elaborating the indicators and Companion Volume during the triennium 2015-2017. The revised Terms of Reference for the Strategic Plan Working Group can be found in Annex 2 to Resolution 11.2.

Membership

The Working Group is composed of Parties to the Convention selected regionally on the basis of the same regions as the Standing Committee, with a maximum of two representatives per region.  Members were selected by the regional groups and agreed upon under the responsibility of the CMS Standing Committee.  The Chairs of the Standing Committee and the Scientific Council are ex-officio members of the Working Group.

Other Parties to CMS, representatives of the CMS Family secretariats, and relevant multilateral environmental agreements’ secretariats and partner organizations are invited to contribute to the work of the Group as observers.

The Group is chaired by Ms Ines Verleye from Belgium. The full list of members is given below.