The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), through its  Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), will lead the national celebration of the International Day for Biological Diversity (IDBD) on May 22, 2024 at the Mind Museum in Taguig City.

With the theme “Be Part of the Plan,” the national celebration will center on advancing the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) through a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. Also called “The Biodiversity Plan,” the framework advocates and promotes a global outreach campaign to halt and reverse biodiversity loss through the full participation of various stakeholders.

This year’s celebration will emphasize the continuous realization of the KMGBF in the Philippines and within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and advance the understanding of biodiversity through immersive media.

It features a series of activities that includes a 10-day social media campaign starting on May 13 until May 22, 2024. The social media campaign of BMB will hallmark the different roles of stakeholders along with the 23 KMGBF targets.

Raising this year’s platform for collaboration and partnerships, the significant role of every stakeholder is placed in the limelight. Partners from the foreign-assisted and special projects, private sectors, and non-governmental organizations will be part of the IDBD 2024 national celebration.

The United Nations Development Programme-Biodiversity Finance for Nature (UNDP-BIOFIN), along with open finance platform co-developers Unit 256 Ventures Inc. and UBX will lead a fund-raising activity called “Art for Nature: Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for Biodiversity” at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel in Ortigas Center on May 20, 2024. The event will feature premium artworks for the protected areas (PAs) and endangered wildlife in the Philippines. It also prompts the emerging NFT enthusiasts in the country toward biodiversity conservation.

On May 22, 2024, at the Mind Museum, Taguig City, partners such as the United States Agency for International Development’s Sustainable Interventions for Biodiversity, Oceans, and Landscapes (USAID SIBOL) and the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity (ACB) will co-lead a celebration that will discuss the progress of the KMGBF, launch the “Sukat ng Kalikasan” ecological guidebook for natural resource managers, and inaugurate a Biodiversity Crisis Escape Room (BCER).

ACB will take part in the talk show while USAID SIBOL will join in the launching of the “Sukat ng Kalikasan” toolkit and the opening of the BCER. Co-developed by USAID SIBOL, DENR, and other national government agencies, the Sukat ng Kalikasan toolkit is a guidebook that features  the local adaptation of the High Conservation Value Areas – Natural Capital Accounting (HCVA-NCA) frameworks that will be instrumental in determining the protection levels and management regimes of protected areas in the Philippines. It will help natural resource managers identify conservation values, set conservation targets, and measure conservation impacts.

The BCER, an immersive escape room experience that teaches biodiversity conservation through the application of the Sukat ng Kalikasan framework, will also be opened. The escape room experience will come with a two-part television show, a sneak peek of which will also be shown on May 22, 2024.

The United Nations Environment Programme noted that the IDBD 2024 celebration aims to “increase the visibility momentum” before the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 16), to be held in Colombia from October 21 to November 1, 2024.

###