YEREVAN, Armenia – Forging strategic partnerships in safeguarding Southeast Asia’s rich biodiversity is critical to achieving both regional and global biodiversity targets. Aligned with this goal, the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the sidelines of the 17th UN Biodiversity Conference, or the CBD COP 17.
Signed at the ASEAN Pavilion, the agreement brings together key stakeholders to advance biodiversity conservation and regional cooperation. This collaboration supports sustainability goals through knowledge exchange, technical assistance, capacity building, and policy dialogue.
The recently launched WWF Living Planet Report 2026 shows a stark 73 per cent decline in monitored wildlife populations between 1970 and 2022. “But we have to insist on the idea of hope, because we already know what works. The solutions exist, and together we can implement them. This MoU is more than a partnership agreement. It is a commitment to working together to deliver real conservation outcomes across ASEAN. That is worth celebrating,” shared Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF Global Lead for Climate and Energy and Interim Chair of the IUCN Climate Crisis Commission. “Success will depend on collaboration—between organisations, among local communities, Indigenous Peoples, businesses, governments, financial institutions, and civil society. The most important priority now is to scale proven solutions with greater speed, ambition, and cooperation,” he added.
Some of the potential key areas for collaboration include promoting inclusive and community-led approaches to conservation; nature-based solutions to support sustainable development, climate resilience, disaster risk reduction, and biodiversity conservation; strengthening mechanisms for inclusive multi-stakeholder engagement and cross-sector coordination as well as transparent and accountable governance systems; among many others.
“Coming from a region that has been immensely endowed with rich biodiversity, the formalisation of our partnership with the WWF opens up many opportunities to put our resources, technical expertise, and networks into combined on-the-ground action to support the commitments set out in the ASEAN Biodiversity Plan and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” shared ACB finance and administration director Genalyn Bagon-Soriano.
Though small in size, spanning only three per cent of the Earth’s land area, the ASEAN region is a biodiversity powerhouse cradling over 25 per cent of the world’s known plant and animal species and including three megadiverse countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. However, recent studies continue to show an upward trend consistently in biodiversity loss due to habitat loss and fragmentation, wildlife trade and hunting, pollution and invasive species, and climate change. The region has the highest risks of vertebrate extinction and lacks conservation action for almost half of the critically endangered species.
“We may have achieved some progress but at an insufficient rate. Given that 2030 is just around the corner, we hope that this partnership with the WWF will help us in delivering our commitments to global and regional frameworks more strategically,” said Bagon-Soriano.
By bringing together ACB’s regional leadership and convening power with WWF’s global conservation expertise and field experience, we can accelerate progress where it matters most and support a shared vision for a more resilient, sustainable and biodiverse future across ASEAN and the wider Asia-Pacific region,” shared Vidal.
The signing ceremony was held at the ASEAN Pavilion which serves as the headquarters of the ASEAN Member States at the CBD COP and is a venue to showcase knowledge products, stage side events and hold meetings with existing and potential partners. The ASEAN Pavilion and ASEAN’s participation at the CBD COP 17 are supported by the European Union, through the Technical Assistance Facility to the Green Team Europe Initiative (TAF-GTEI), SD Guthrie, and Metro Pacific Investments Corporation.
To know more about ASEAN’s side events at COP17, log on to cbd-cop.aseanbiodiversity.org.
