Based on experience from projects carried out to date relating to biodiversity conservation, there are four areas of action for German Development Cooperation:

• Shaping the framework: To give the CBD a development focus and mainstream its objectives and approaches into international cooperation: this includes regulating access to resources and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilisation – but also maintaining traditional knowledge about nature.
• Protecting nature: There are new possibilities for addressing the traditional issues of conservation or sustainable use of biological diversity. For example, tourism in protected areas can give drive to the development of remote regions. Cooperation with the people on the ground is just as vital to such activities as is their integration within national development strategies.
• Securing food: Agricultural ecosystems secure world food supply and the livelihoods of most people in developing countries. For this reason, the diversity of these ecosystems must be conserved and their functionality ensured.
• Communicating biodiversity: The complex interplay of economic, ecological and social factors calls for new forms of environmental communication both in and between North and South. Innovative communication on biological diversity is based on dialogue and takes local and cultural uses into account.