Regional : Scaling Up the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Initiative

Agriculture, natural resources and rural development / Land-based natural resources management - Water-based natural resources management

The technical assistance (TA) seeks to strengthen institutional capacity, identify and create investment proposals for priority sites and develop a financing mechanism to support the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) in the long-term.

The TA will establish a framework to identify sites of highest priority within the EAAF. The TA will engage with participating developing member countries to strengthen protection and sustainable use of these sites. A subsequent investment framework will be completed where investment proposals are developed for each site maximizing biodiversity gains as well as co-benefits and improvements to local livelihoods. The TA will then establish a financing mechanism to generate financial resources particularly from EAAF Partnership members that are Asian Development Bank (ADB) donor countries, to maintain both priority sites and regional flyway initiatives in the long-term.

The EAAF is the most vulnerable of the eight major migratory flyways. It covers East and Southeast Asia and Australasia, extending across 22 countries from the Arctic Circle in the north to New Zealand in the south. Thousands of wetlands are present in the EAAF, which support over 50 million migratory waterbirds from more than 210 species, of which 20% are globally threatened. The wetlands are vital for bird species, which make return migrations each year between breeding and wintering grounds and their globe-spanning nature means they are important "sentinels" of regional and global environmental change.

The wetlands that make up the EAAF provide food, medicine, fuel, income, and other benefits for nearly 200 million people in the Asia-Pacific region as well as maintaining essential ecosystem services such as flood regulation and carbon sequestration. Despite this extensive loss and degradation of coastal and inland wetlands continues, largely due to conversion and drainage for agriculture and due to climate change. Hunting of waterbirds and other wetland fauna is a major threat in many sites. Existing and successful efforts by the EAAFP and other development partners to protect migratory waterbirds and wetlands in the EAAF are in urgent need of scaling up existing support and providing an opportunity for nature-positive investments at a regional scale. Constraints to existing efforts are: (i) limited institutional capacity, data and related information gaps on valuation of wetland ecosystem services; (ii) inadequate support for sustainable wetlands management; and (iii) lack of sustainable livelihood options and financing.

Of the countries across which the flyway extends, 10 are ADB DMCs and all of these are signatories to the Strategic Plan of the EAAF Partnership as well as the Ramsar Convention. The TA will support the delivery of the EAAFP Strategic Plan and DMC obligations under the Ramsar Convention, and will contribute to support of regional public goods, supporting measures for biodiversity protection and sustainable resource management and use of the EAAF wetlands which form a transboundary network of key importance for waterbird species.

Effective protection and sustainable use of a network of wetland sites in the EAAF bolstered, benefitting wetland biodiversity and people.

Wetland management in the EAAF improved

Institutional capacity for understanding of EAAF wetland values enhanced regionally

RFI investment framework for priority EAAF sites prepared

RFI financing mechanism developed