Aliens Newsletter - ISSG

workshop. This was held at the offices of IUCN in
Nairobi, Kenya, from 20 th to 22 nd April involving
18 people from Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania,
Uganda and Zambia with a West African participant
from Burkina Faso and two colleagues from
UK and Switzerland. Those attending the workshop
were from government agencies, non-government
organizations and the (biofuel) private sector with
expertise and experience in biodiversity conservation,
biological invasions, alternative energy
sources, research and biofuel production systems in
this region of Africa.
This first workshop had five objectives:
• To appreciate the need for biofuels as alternatives
to fossil fuels
• To gain some general idea of biofuel developments
in the eastern and southern African region
• To raise awareness among biofuel policy makers
and investors of the invasive species risks of biofuel
plants
• To raise awareness among those involved with invasive
species about biofuel systems and risks associated
with impacts of biofuel developments
• To identify lessons and tools to manage the risks
These objectives were all achieved through presentations,
discussions and the drafting of some first set
of guidelines developed as lessons and tools during
the 2.5 days. All of this information, including a
workshop report and draft guidelines are available
on the IUCN website at
http://www.iucn.org/about/work/initiatives/energy_welcome/energy_impacts/energy_bioenergy/biofuel_invasives/
under “1st Workshop on Invasive Species and Biofuels”.
The draft guidance that was produced from the
workshop was then placed on the IUCN website and
advertised widely for comment for several months
– allowing the opinions of other interested parties
to be incorporated. These were incorporated into a
subsequent draft which was the subject of the second
workshop.
Workshop Two
This second workshop was held at the same venue
as the first on 5 th and 6 th October, 2009 and included
18 participants from the same range of
countries as in the first workshop – but covering
a wider group of interests including government
agencies responsible for biofuels and alternative
energy policies, civil society organizations promoting
biofuels and a private sector organization
providing finance for biofuel production developments
– in addition to biodiversity conservation
and invasive species expertise and environmental
regulatory bodies.
The meeting was also fortunate enough to be able
to bring a representative of the Roundtable for Sustainable
Biofuels from Switzerland to both advise
the workshop and to contribute to the discussions
and take away a finalised product (as far as possible).
The objectives of this meeting were:
• To consult with different sectors to identify possible
weaknesses and objections that could undermine
the proposed guidelines
• To identify which groups may use the guidelines
and in what ways
• To identify what information would be needed by
different users to complement the guidelines and
maximize their efficacy
• To test the guidelines, possibly with a set of different
scenarios of potential uses
• To follow-up with a refined set of guidelines
Again the objectives of the workshop were largely
realized, especially in as much as a final set of
agreed guidelines was discussed, prepared and drafted
for publication. As before, the process, presentations
and discussions of the meeting were described
in a second workshop report which was
posted on the IUCN website next to the first report
(above).
26 29/2010