Alpine Biodiversity Board

The Alps house a rich diversity of nature and landscapes, offering a living place to numerous plants and animals. Biological diversity is the foundation for our food, quality of life, and health. The XV Alpine Conference recognised this key role by establishing an Alpine Biodiversity Board (ABB). The aim of the Board is to facilitate strategic and technical cooperation between the Alpine countries by sharing experiences and identifying common work of collaboration. 

The ABB’s current mandate builds on the work initiated in the previous ones that focused on proposing sets of indicators to monitor Alpine biodiversity and strengthen the recognition of Alpine biodiversity at national, European, and international level. 

Since its 2023-2024 mandate, the ABB has been focusing on four main topics in particular – monitoring, restoration, connectivity, and conservation – which will pave the way for an Alpine Biodiversity Action Plan 2030 to be validated by the XIX Alpine Conference. Within each of these four topics, the ABB is constantly seeking out opportunities for further collaboration. The new EU Nature Restoration Law and its Nature Restoration Plan represents a possible common framework for further collaboration at the Alpine level. 

In this context, the ABB is also supporting the implementation of an Alpine project on biodiversity monitoring called ‘AlpsLife’, which aims to provide a common ground to ensure that political decisions are based on reliable and consistent biodiversity indicators at Alpine level. 

The ABB also explores cross-cutting issues, identifying synergies with other key topics of the Alpine Convention (in particular spatial planning, transport, climate change, and large carnivores).