RCMRD | RCMRD Launches Biodiversity Outlook for Eastern & Southern Africa to Strengthen Regional Conservation Action

RCMRD Launches Biodiversity Outlook for Eastern & Southern Africa to Strengthen Regional Conservation Action

Nairobi, Kenya | 22 September 2026

By Abigael Sum

Biodiversity knowledge is critical to understanding the pressures facing nature and informing the decisions needed to address them. Across Eastern and Southern Africa, valuable biodiversity data, research and regional experience exist across countries and institutions. The challenge is making this knowledge accessible and useful for policy and action.

It is against this backdrop that the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) through the Regional Centre of Excellence for Eastern an Southern Africa (RCoE-ESA), in collaboration with the European Union and Landscape Alliance, launched the Biodiversity Outlook for Eastern & Southern Africa (BOESA) in Nairobi on 22 September 2026.

The publication was launched during the ArcX Programme Regional Workshop on Integrated Landscape-Seascape Modelling for Climate Resilience Development in East Africa, held from 22–24 September 2026.

Bringing regional biodiversity knowledge together

BOESA brings together biodiversity information, regional perspectives, case studies and practical experiences from 24 countries across Eastern and Southern Africa. It is designed to make this knowledge more accessible to policymakers, conservation practitioners, researchers, development partners, communities and other stakeholders working to advance biodiversity conservation.

The publication responds to an important need: moving beyond the collection of data to ensuring that knowledge can inform decisions and support action.

“BOESA reflects the importance of bringing together data, knowledge and regional experiences to support informed decisions for biodiversity conservation,” said Dr Emmanuel Nkurunziza, Director General, RCMRD. “By making this information more accessible, we aim to support policymakers, conservation practitioners, researchers, development partners and communities in advancing nature-positive action across the region.”

Connecting research, policy and action

For Sanne Willems, a Regional Partnership Official from the Delegation of the European Union to Kenya, the value of initiatives such as BOESA lies in strengthening the connection between research and practical policy action. She noted that the programme seeks to translate data into accessible information for young people and decision-makers while building the capacity of countries to take action based on the information collected.

“We try to translate research and mapping into practical policy data. We have seen many programmes over the years do incredibly valuable research, but we often lack the next step of translating it into policy and therefore translating it into action afterwards. Collecting data is not enough.”

This science-to-policy-to-action pathway is central to BOESA’s purpose. By bringing together regional evidence and experiences in one resource, the publication provides a foundation for greater understanding, knowledge sharing and informed biodiversity action.

BOESA and the global biodiversity agenda

The launch comes at an important point in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and its 2030 targets. It also takes place ahead of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), scheduled for 19–30 October 2026 in Yerevan, Armenia. COP17 will feature the first global review of collective progress in implementing the KMGBF.

In this context, BOESA provides a regional resource for bringing together information, experiences and insights that can contribute to understanding biodiversity progress, challenges and priorities across Eastern and Southern Africa.

RCMRD’s role in advancing accessible biodiversity knowledge

The development of BOESA reinforces RCMRD’s role in applying geospatial information, Earth observation and knowledge-sharing to environmental and sustainable development challenges. For RCMRD, the publication also demonstrates how geospatial intelligence can extend beyond maps and datasets to become accessible knowledge that supports decision-making. BOESA is therefore not only a publication; it represents an approach to connecting data, knowledge, policy and action.

As countries work towards the 2030 biodiversity targets, strengthening access to credible, relevant and locally grounded information will remain important for conservation planning, collaboration and implementation.