From left to right: Warren Evans, Director of Environment, World Bank; Marco Lambertini, BirdLife; Gustavo Fonseca, Head of the Global Environment Facility's Natural Resources Team; Braulio Dias, Brazil's Ministry of the Environment; Mike Parr, ABC Vice President and AZE Chair

Nagoya, Japan, 29 October, 2010. The World Bank and Global Environment Facility announced a new initiative to halt species extinctions Wednesday, at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The institutions joined forces with the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) – a network of 68 biodiversity conservation organizations working to prevent species extinctions – to help developing countries halt the extinction crisis. AZE is currently chaired by American Bird Conservancy which has been one of the leaders of the initiative from its inception.

The new partnership will respond to requests from developing countries for assistance in their efforts to protect key species sites identified by the AZE. Over the next four years, a new AZE strategic global extinction threat map will be used to target action, helping to safeguard key sites where species are in imminent danger of disappearing.

The AZE map identifies 587 sites that are the last remaining refuges for 920 Critically Endangered or Endangered species. Loss of any one of these sites would precipitate an extinction event.

“The GEF, the financial mechanism of the CBD, has been guided by the Conference of the Parties to provide funding to developing countries to ensure that the protection of globally threatened species is not missed within their national protected areas systems”, said Monique Barbut, GEF Chairperson. “The sites identified by the Alliance for Zero Extinction provide a roadmap to the locations where urgent interventions are imperative before extinction inflicts its final blow.”

“At least for vertebrate species, we still have a narrow window to build a comprehensive global strategy to halt the impending extinction crisis,” said Mike Parr, American Bird Conservancy Vice President and Chair of the AZE Steering Committee. “The starting point for that action should be a global plan that provides a realistic means of halting this crisis: the AZE approach provides the centerpiece of this plan.”

The World Bank Group will serve as the lead implementing agency of the GEF, and will work with partners and others in the AZE alliance including BirdLife International. Conserving the AZE-identified sites is a clearly actionable global biodiversity conservation priority, in the context of the international community's ambition of meeting the post-2010 targets currently under discussion in Nagoya. Several countries are pioneering AZE site conservation, including Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, among others. While much has already been achieved through the AZE approach, work now needs to be greatly scaled up to meet the challenge.

“The World Bank looks forward to getting access to the highly endangered sites from the Alliance for Zero Extinction to assist in its own operations. This scientifically based and critical information has not always been readily available to development agencies such as the World Bank and others. AZE would pilot the use of this tool to mainstream biodiversity in other World Bank sectors”, said Warren Evans, Director of the Environment Department of the World Bank.

Groups such as American Bird Conservancy are already undertaking work to save AZE species by working collaboratively with in-country partners such as Fundacion ProAves in Colombia to save the charismatic Chesnut-capped Piha; with ECOAN in Peru to protect the rare Long-whiskered Owlet, and Fundacion Jocotoco in Ecuador to protect the critically endangered Jocotoco Antpitta.