Human-Wildlife Conflict under CMS: Strengthening alignment across initiatives

As human populations expand and land-use changes intensify, migratory animals are increasingly entering agricultural areas, urban settlements, and infrastructure corridors, leading to economic losses, safety risks, and retaliatory harm to wildlife. Often notoriously challenging to resolve, human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) are presenting parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) with a real struggle to make progress in protecting both wildlife and communities affected by this issue.   

Various CMS frameworks, including the Central Asian Mammals Initiative (CAMI), African Carnivores Initiative (ACI), and the Jaguar Initiative, address HWC through species-, region-, and threat-specific activities. However, opportunities remain to enhance knowledge sharing between Parties and strengthen coherence between these efforts. 

Facilitated by the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group, this side event will provide an opportunity for CMS Parties to compare and discuss how different CMS initiatives address human-wildlife conflict, highlighting complementarities, overlaps, gaps, and good practices based on existing efforts. Through an interactive format, this event will support greater alignment among CMS initiatives, promote mutual learning between Parties and help inform future work in support of migratory species conservation and coexistence.