Ecosystem profile: Eastern Arc mountains & coastal forests of Tanzania & Kenya biodiversity hotspot
(2003). Ecosystem profile: Eastern Arc mountains & coastal forests of Tanzania & Kenya biodiversity hotspot. Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF): [s.l.]. 69 pp.
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| Abstract |
The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is designed to safeguard the world's threatened biodiversity hotspots in developing countries. It is a joint initiative of Conservation International (CI), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Government of Japan, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. CEPF supports projects in hotspots, areas with more than 60 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial species in just 1.4 percent of its land surface. A fundamental purpose of CEPF is to ensure that civil society is engaged in efforts to conserve biodiversity in the hotspots. An additional purpose is to ensure that those efforts complement existing strategies and frameworks established by local, regional and national governments. CEPF aims to promote working alliances among community groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government, academic institutions and the private sector, combining unique capacities and eliminating duplication of efforts for a comprehensive approach to conservation. CEPF is unique among funding mechanisms in that it focuses on biological areas rather than political boundaries and examines conservation threats on a corridor-wide basis to identify and support a regional, rather than a national, approach to achieving conservation outcomes. Corridors are determined through a process of identifying important species, site and corridor-level conservation outcomes for the hotspot. CEPF targets transboundary cooperation when areas rich in biological value straddle national borders, or in areas where a regional approach will be more effective than a national approach. The Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya hotspot (hereafter referred to as the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests hotspot) is one of the smallest of the 25 global biodiversity hotspots. It qualifies by virtue of its high endemicity and a severe degree of threat. Although the hotspot ranks low compared to other hotspots in total numbers of endemic species, it ranks first among the 25 hotspots in the number of endemic plant and vertebrate species per unit area (Myers et al. 2000). It also shows a high degree of congruence for plants and vertebrates. It is also considered as the hotspot most likely to suffer the most plant and vertebrate extinction for a given loss of habitat and as one of 11 “hyperhot” priorities for conservation investment (Brooks et al. 2002). |
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