4th Regional Session – Southern & Eastern Africa Global Biodiversity Forum Workshop on Health, Poverty and Conservation: Securing Africa’s Future: Biodiversity and Health – HIV/AIDS Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania 9 - 11 June 2004

POLICY ADVOCACY AND PRACTICE STRATEGIES

Building on the information and practices developed from the preceding themes and shared throughout the sessions, the final theme will focus on the way forward through policy advocacy and new practice strategies. The aim from this perspective is to develop a participatory articulation of goals and the policy and practice strategies necessary to achieve them. Articulation of an approach to affecting policy change and implementing new good practice will allow participants to rejoin the plenary session with tangible plans of action and a unified strategy for mainstreaming these issues into the larger agenda. The session will address both national and local governmental policy, and importantly the connection between the two. There must necessarily be a certain degree of flexibility with respect to what policy areas will be targeted as these will be determined most clearly by the participants themselves as the dialogue evolves. Suggested examples of important policy areas to be addressed at the national and local levels include:

• the appropriate institutional and policy arrangements to secure human well being through conservation of biodiversity
   
• the appropriate institutional and policy arrangements to specifically address HIV/AIDS infection in the conservation community and as it impacts natural resource management and land use
   
• the implications of key global and national economic policies, including the changing role of the private sector, for achieving MDG targets in the health – particularly HIV/AIDS and conservation sectors
   
• land use policies (inheritance for widows and orphans) and bushmeat polices that would help to prevent the transmission of disease from wildlife to humans

The theme will address broad health issues, but will reserve special attention and time for HIV/AIDS and the good practice case studies that provide insight into impacting the policy environment and implementing new practice methodologies on the ground.

Cross-cutting themes: governance, livelihoods, food security, gender, institutional arrangements and access rights and equitable sharing of benefits in fostering human well-being.

What principles and approaches to effective governance exist for achieving livelihood security, poverty reduction and sustainable resource use?

How important/relevant is good governance in achieving poverty reduction, enhancing human health and conserving biodiversity for human well-being?

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