The Americas Flyways Initiative launches, investing billions to save birds, landscapes and livelihoods

September 22, 2023

The Americas Flyways Initiative (AFI) was officially presented at The Climate Week in New York as a cohesive and relevant opportunity for synergy, integration, and harmonious coexistence that unites people and nature beyond borders, seeking healthy and prosperous environments.

The Americas Flyways Initiative launches

The Americas Flyway Initiative (AFI) is a hemispheric, innovative, and visionary approach led by The National Audubon Society, BirdLife International, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) to protect, conserve, and restore nature and address the biodiversity loss and climate change crisis across the Americas. 

After ten months of evolving from concept to action, AFI was officially presented at The Climate Week in New York as a cohesive and relevant opportunity for synergy, integration, and harmonious coexistence that unites people and nature beyond borders, seeking healthy and prosperous environments.  

AFI is building a portfolio for transformative high-level projects to make the most significant economic investment in the Americas focused on sustainable development projects to benefit local communities and the planet’s welfare and safeguard a crucial ecosystem network for migratory and endemic threatened resident birds throughout the Western Hemisphere. Critical sites on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador and Chile are already being piloted. 

The ambition is to identify over thirty critical landscapes and seascapes along the Americas flyways for urgent conservation, restoration, and management by local partners, communities, and indigenous peoples. America’s flyways cover North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean, extending across 35 countries, from the Arctic Circle in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south. 

As former BirdLife International CEO Patricia Zurita stated, “Conservation without action is only conversation.” AFI is a dynamic platform for decision-makers and the private sector to reach national commitments to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of the Paris Agreement in the United Nations Framework Convention United States on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the post-Aichi targets negotiated within the Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the 30 x 30 goals. 

AFI is built upon and inspired by the groundbreaking foundation launched in 2021 by BirdLife International, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership. The Americas hold three of the eight major migratory bird flyways in the world, which makes this region pivotal to planetary biodiversity and climate change response. Nevertheless, stopover and wintering sites are disappearing at an alarming pace along these routes.  

The AFI will make the most significant economic investment in the Americas focused on sustainable development projects to benefit local communities, the planet’s welfare and safeguard a crucial ecosystem network for migratory and endemic threatened resident birds throughout the Western Hemisphere.  

From Left to right: Aurelio Ramos, Audubon, Martin Harper, CEO (Interim), BirdLife International, Elizabeth Gray, CEO, The National Audubon Society, Alicia Montalvo, Climate Action and Biodiversity Positive Manager, Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean – CAF Photo: Mike Fernandez, Audubon

Beyond borders and sectoral silos

Collaboration between sectors and disciplines is essential to strengthening climate action and building long-term sustainable development. The Americas Flyways Initiative proposes a unique, impactful approach to biodiversity conservation by integrating and scaling up nature-based climate solutions through major economic development projects designed to include safeguards across a network of critical habitats for declining populations of shared migratory birds throughout the Americas.  

Audubon and BirdLife International will use advanced scientific and digital technologies to select sites, programs, and landscapes crucial for biodiversity conservation and community development as investment areas. They will also add their network of on-the-ground implementation capacity and communications capabilities. CAF brings its vast experience in sustainable development models and projects’ technical and financial structuring as part of its commitment to become the region’s green bank by financing climate and biodiversity-friendly projects.   

Innovative funding mechanisms from private and public sources will support this Initiative. It is a first step towards integrating flyway-wide conservation, communications, monitoring, and the governance needed to fully support hemispheric conservation at scale for the benefit of birds, biodiversity, nature, and people.

“This is an important initiative because the three institutions that are participating here (BirdLife International, Audubon and CAF) have very different mandates. But at the same time, really all of us want the same thing, which is to protect the environment, to reach the protection of the 30% of the ecosystem that was agreed upon in Montreal.Healthy ecosystems for birds are healthy ecosystems for people.”  said Alicia Montalvo, Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity Manager CAF.

“Not too many years ago, it would have been a rare thing to find thought leaders from the financial sector sharing the stage with environmental leaders and strategizing over bird conservation. It didn’t happen because there was no perceived need. These two worlds did not appear to overlap. Today, the global threat of climate change and species loss has opened all our eyes to how small our world is, how connected we all are — and that all living things are, or will, feel the impact of our changing climate” said Elizabeth Gray, National Audubon Society CEO.

“We’ve got to find new creative ways to do things differently, to be bold, to be courageous, to form more collaborations […] And that is what the America’s Flyway Initiative is all about […] We must try wherever we can to raise awareness about the wonder of migratory birds and the importance of the places where they live. Because if people are aware, they’re more likely to care, and if they care, they are more likely to act […] So, to preserve these incredible places, to preserve the wonder of migrations, preserve our migratory species, to ensure that the people who call these places home, we have to think and act very, very differently. We have to be bold. We have to take risks. And I think that is exactly what the Americas Flyways Initiative is trying to achieve” said Martin Harper, BirdLife International CEO (Interim).

“This is a unique and impactful approach that addresses climate change by using market-based solutions, effectively integrating the benefits of nature-based activity with major economic development projects” said Elizabeth Gray, National Audubon Society CEO.

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