The France IUCN partnership is 20 years old!

For 20 years, France and the IUCN have been working together to advance biodiversity and sustainable development issues.On Tuesday, July 8, we gathered at the Palais d’Iéna with IUCN and the French government represented by Ministers Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Annie Genevard, and Thani Mohamed-Soilihi to celebrate two decades of strategic partnership, together with all of their partners.Naturally, the French Committee plays a central role in this partnership. As chair, I presented the many synergies that exist between the Committee and the Partnership after taking the time to consult with my predecessors, Blandin Patrick, Christophe Lefebvre, François Letourneux, and Bernard Cressens, who helped to establish and implement this collaboration.

I have selected three examples from their accounts :

• Biodiversity conservation in European overseas territories: since 2003, the French Committee has been advocating for stronger protection of overseas territories and set up an “Overseas” Commission. It quickly suggested that a program dedicated to European overseas territories be created within the IUCN European office. With the help of the Partnership, a first meeting took place in 2008 in Réunion. This gave rise to the European Commission’s BEST program, which still exists today!

• Pioneering support for Nature-based Solutions: unsurprisingly, the deployment of Nature-based Solutions, notably through the development of the IUCN global standard in 2020, is one of the great successes of the collaboration between the French Committee and the Partnership.
• The development of Green Lists: the French Committee played a major role in introducing the Green List of Protected Areas into the Framework Agreement in order to make it a global standard for effective protected area management, building on the work it had done with French-speaking members. It should be noted that this initiative has been particularly successful in France, as we still have the largest number of certified sites in the world (25).

The highlight of the evening was the signing of the sixth phase of the partnership by Minister Thani Mohamed-Soilihi, IUCN Director General Grethel Aguilar, and Deputy Director General of the French Development Agency Bertrand Walckenaer.

I would like to thank all those who have contributed to making this Partnership an example of international cooperation since 2005:

• Julia Marton-Lefèvre, who did a tremendous job in launching this partnership as Director General of IUCN.

• Grethel Aguilar, current Director General of IUCN, who has been strongly committed to the launch of the 6th phase of the Framework Agreement.

• Thierry Lefebvre, who was one of the first French experts in the partnership and now works at IUCN.Finally, the lessons learned over the past 20 years provide us with a roadmap for the future: build broader coalitions, take action at the regional level, and invest in transformative approaches. We look forward to the next 20 years !