Ireland - Sixth National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity

This assessment report reviews Ireland’s progress in relation to the five Strategic Goals and 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets set by the Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan in 2011 for implementation by 2020. The assessment is required for reporting purposes by the CBD with the previous report having been submitted in 2013. It begins in Section I with a brief description of each of the 7 Objectives and 18 Targets of Ireland’s National Biodiversity Action Plan (NBAP). The section describes the context to these Objectives and Targets and the links between them and the Aichi Targets of the CBD. Section II describes the implementation measures for NBAP along their need, the obstacles they face and their effectiveness. Section III discusses the performance of these measures against each Target of the NBAP. This is followed in Section IV by an assessment of the performance of each Target in relation to the Aichi Targets, including the global influence and relationship with the UN Sustainable development Goals. In Section V, the performance of national measures is addressed in relation to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. There is some repetition between sections due to the need to discuss different aspects of measures. This means that where a measure or its effectiveness appear not to have been fully assessed in one section, it is very likely to have been addressed in the next. Section IV is presented as a series of questions for each Target as proposed in the CBD reporting guidelines and draws together the results of the assessment from the preceding sections.