The Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ), the Danish Board of Technology (DBT) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) are pleased to announce the inception of the project entitled: World Wide Views on Biodiversity (WWViews). The project is sponsored by the VILLUM Foundation, the Danish Ministry of the Environment, and the Japan Biodiversity Fund. ARIJ is a national partner in th
e WWViews project representing the Palestinian Territory (PT), and is co-financing the project in the PT. World Wide Views on Biodiversity aims to involve citizens around the world in the design of global biodiversity policy and understand perspectives on biodiversity from young people and adults all over the world. The World Wide Views on Biodiversity project will be enacted through consultations with 2500-3000 citizens (in total) in 27 countries around the world on September 15th 2012. The citizens will be provided beforehand with material on biodiversity and at the meetings they will discuss in groups how to deal with the decline in biodiversity and vote on predefined questions. The results of the citizen votes will be collected on the WWViews website, where it will be possible to compare the results from one country or continent to results from others. Furthermore, the results will be presented at COP11 in India in October 2012 and will give the decision-makers a unique opportunity to get an insight into the views and perspectives of citizens worldwide on biodiversity policies. On March 28th 2012 World Wide Views on Biodiversity was officially launched at the Danish Ministry of Environment, where Project Managers from 27 countries from all parts of the world, ambassadors, and representatives from many of the participating countries were gathered. The project launch was hosted by the Danish Minister for the Environment, Ms. Lars Klüver, Director of the Danish Board of Technology. The launch took place during a three day training seminar in Copenhagen for Project Managers. At the seminar, they were trained in WWViews methods for the selection of citizen participants and the preparations and practical arrangements for the WWViews meetings. This common methodological approach will ensure easy comparability of results. Countries involved in the WWViews project are: Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Maldives, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestinian Territory, People’s Republic of China, Philippines, Saint Lucia, South Africa, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Uganda, United States, Vietnam, Wales, and Zambia. The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) is the national partner representing the Palestinian Territory in the WWViews project. ARIJ, in cooperation with Palestinian Ministry of Environment (MoE), is therefore responsible for preparing and conducting the consultation event on September 15th 2012 in the Palestinian Territory (PT) and reporting the Palestinian voting results to the DBT - WWViews project coordinator and COP 11 Palestinian delegates. ARIJ was invited by the DBT to represent PT in the project and has been working on project preparations since November 2010. ARIJ attended the project training session in Copenhagen (Denmark) under the coordination of DBT. ARIJ found the project an opportunity for Palestinians to join the global WWViews alliance and to express their views on biodiversity conservation at the global level. Up to 100 Palestinian citizens will be invited from the different governorates of the West Bank. The selected citizens will be ordinary people, chosen to reflect demographic diversity within the West Bank with regards to age, gender, occupation, education and geographic locality types, where a representative sample from the different governorates will be selected.
