On April 30, 2018, the Burundian Office for Environmental Protection (OBPE) organized, within the premises of the Restaurant la Détente in Bujumbura, a workshop to validate a draft of the speech speech of the Head of State on the sectoral integration of biodiversity. This workshop is part of the project “integrating biodiversity into national and sectoral development policies in Burundi” funded by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Present at this meeting were OBPE executives, professors from the University of Burundi as well as local associations working in the field of biodiversity.

The workshop began with the speech of the Director General of OBPE, Dr. Samuel NDAYIRAGIJE welcoming the participants to this workshop. At the beginning of his speech, he said that objective 2 of the new National Strategy and Action Plan on Biodiversity (SNPAB) aims to integrate biodiversity into development policies and that this integration can only be done with the effective involvement of stakeholders and especially of senior decision-makers. Thus, he added, Burundi has developed a project “Integrating biodiversity into the highest decision-making bodies in Burundi” to attract the attention of decision-makers and lead them towards the effective integration of biodiversity. Thus, a Second Vice-Presidency official appointed to work with the project coordination team was responsible for drafting the Head of State's speech on biodiversity. He ended his speech by thanking the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which, thanks to its financial support, made it possible to organize this workshop and the participants who responded to this workshop despite their multiple occupations.

After this speech, there was a presentation of the speech-program project by Thération NSHIMIRIMANA, resource person and executive at the Second Vice Presidency, involved in the establishment of an interministerial platform on biodiversity.

At the beginning of his presentation, he said that on May 22, Burundi will celebrate the International Day for Biodiversity under the theme “twenty-five years of implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity” and announced that Burundi will take advantage of this opportunity to deliver this speech which relates the achievements in the conservation of biodiversity and during the twenty-five years of implementation of the convention and which reveals some prospects for the future.

He then proceeded to project and read all the points forming part of this draft speech comprising two essential parts, namely generalities on biodiversity and the state of play on biodiversity in Burundi and future perspectives. This first part focused on points 1-27 highlighting the role of biodiversity, challenges in conservation, activities carried out, texts and laws developed and conventions that Burundi has ratified as well as conservation efforts; the second part, which includes only one point 28, discusses what needs to be done for this integration to be effective. This point 28 includes 12 sub-items including awareness-raising activities, capacity building, the establishment of mechanisms and the promotion of the conservation of biodiversity in its various aspects.

He ended his presentation by inviting participants to make comments and additions, corrections to validate the document.

The participants then asked questions to the contact person and also expressed their opinions and considerations.

During this exchange and discussion session, the participants proposed to make a systematic correction point by point by projecting the draft speech program. For all of the participants' questions and concerns, the contact person provided them with clarifications.

This workshop was closed by the OBPE Forest Director after validation of the draft speech by the participants. He thus thanked the participants for their contributions and invited the consultant to advocate for this speech to be delivered on time. He did not forget to invite participants to take part in the International Day for Biodiversity which will take place in Bururi on May 22, 2018.

During this workshop the following recommendations were made:

• It was recommended to put on the policy briefs and posters, the importance of biodiversity before the challenges and the various achievements;
• Since future perspectives are concrete actions to be taken, it was recommended that future perspectives be formulated as a national commitment;
• It was recommended to adopt a strategy to get approval for the reading of the biodiversity keynote speech;
• Since the target audience includes educated and non-educated people, it was recommended that the keynote speech be translated into Kirundi;
• It was also recommended to advocate for this discourse on biodiversity to reach the competent authorities in time and therefore to the person concerned.