FAO Hosts SWM Programme Legal Diagnostic Tool Validation Meeting in Rome
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hosted a Legal Diagnostic Tool Validation meeting from 17-19 June this week in Rome.
Organised within the framework of the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme, the meeting sought to refine and validate the legal diagnostic tools aimed at promoting sustainable wildlife management.
The SWM Programme is an international initiative that aims to enhance wildlife conservation and food security across forest, savannah and wetland ecosystems. Notably, the Programme launched its Legal Hub as part of the first phase of the initiative (2018-2023), which compiles legal texts online and analyses them using legal diagnostic tools, which has helped facilitate law reform in numerous countries.
The SWM Programme is also part of the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management’s (CPW) 2023-2025 Work Plan, which was adopted last year at SBSTTA-25 in Nairobi, Kenya. The CPW is a voluntary partnership of 13 international organisations – including the CIC – with substantive mandates and programmes for the sustainable use and conservation of wildlife resources.
CIC Senior Policy Coordinator, Alexandra Kalandarishvili, was in attendance in Rome to provide technical input.
The meeting focused on validating the SWM Programme’s legal diagnostic tools with the aim of using them for country-specific legal analyses, the outputs of which would be shared on the Legal Hub for further use.
Indeed, these diagnostic tools have been updated throughout the course of this year to ensure they are in line with the global wildlife management agenda.
As part of the proceedings in Rome, participants focused on incorporating the following topics as part of diagnostics on the road ahead: One Health, community rights-based approaches and principles from Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) were among the topics recently incorporated into the tools.
In particular, attendees explored how the Legal Hub could address challenges in relation to implementing different environmental conventions, One Health from a legal, policy, and governance perspective, and to best support the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.
