As part of a series of meetings in Europe, including attending the opening of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Geneva, Inger Andersen, the newly-appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) paid a visit to Bonn to meet the staff of the CMS Family.

Bonn/Kep, December 2019 - A regional training workshop was organized in Kep, Cambodia (29 October – 2 November 2018) for projects funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Marine Turtle Conservation Fund in Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

At the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP13) held last year in Dubai, Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands passed a resolution titled: The enhanced conservation of coastal marine turtle habitats and the designation of key areas as Ramsar Sites. Five out of seven species of marine turtles are endangered, three of them being critically endangered, according to the endangered species list of the IUCN. One of the main threats to the animals is the degradation of the nesting habitats on the coast, where female turtles lay their eggs and where turtle hatchlings start their lifetime journeys.

CMS has become a member of UN-Oceans as BBNJ meetings start at UN Headquarters in New York this week. The new membership became official just before the start of the First Session of the Intergovernmental Conference on an International Legally Binding Instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ).