The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) – A Plan to Save the World’s Plant Species – grew out of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and has been fed into government policy around the world.

The GSPC highlights the importance of plants and the ecosystem services they provide for all life on earth, and aims to ensure their conservation.

In 2010, as part of the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD, an updated GSPC, for the period 2010-2020 was adopted. This updated GSPC included 16 targets for plant conservation to be achieved by 2020.

A review of progress in the implementation of the 2020 GSPC targets was carried out in 2020 and published by the CBD Secretariat in the Plant Conservation Report 2020.

Key achievements of the GSPC to 2020

• A number of countries, including some of the world’s most biodiverse countries (e.g. Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines and South Africa) have developed national plant conservation strategies/responses which align with the GSPC. Between them these countries include over 50% of the world’s plant diversity. In the case of some countries, (e.g. Mexico and China), national plant conservation strategies and targets extend beyond 2020.
• An online World Flora of all known plants, supported by over 40 institutions working together in the World Flora Online Consortium, is now available and continues to develop.
• A growing number of companies use the FairWild Standard to ensure the sustainable sourcing of wild harvested plant-based products from countries around the world.
• The Global Tree Assessment has completed Red List assessments for all the world’s tree species.
• An interactive toolkit is guiding countries in the conservation of crop wild relatives.
• Important Plant Areas are being identified and protected in a growing number of countries and are helping generate plant data to support the conservation work in Key Biodiversity Areas.

A post-2020 GSPC

In line with the development of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and through broad international stakeholder consultations, a new set of plant conservation targets are now proposed. Completely aligned with the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, they aim to be clearly identifiable as components, sub-targets or milestones towards the biodiversity targets.

We expect the post-2020 GSPC to be finalised following the adoption of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD in December 2022.

Learn more about the GSPC from our Moodle module: Introduction to International Environmental Policies

Further details about the 2010-2020 GSPC are available on the GSPC toolkit.