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The Plant Actions Toolkit

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), with its 22 Plant Actions, is a guide to ensuring a world rich in wild plants. It supports the world’s governments, institutions and all sectors of society to meet our common commitment to: ‘halt and reverse biodiversity loss and to put nature on a path to recovery’.

Background on the GSPC
Wetlands
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Plants are a vital component of our planet’s biological diversity and are essential to all life on earth. They form the basis of most terrestrial ecosystems and provide ecosystem services to support human wellbeing, including climate regulation and food security. Plants and their ecosystems have influenced our cultural and spiritual development and are woven into languages, place names, religion and folklore across the world.

Why do we need specific actions for plants?

We know that life on earth depends on its extraordinary diversity of plants, yet potentially 45% of all flowering plant species are threatened with extinction.

Far too often, the world’s wild plants are relegated to a green background for more charismatic wildlife. It is time they are brought to the forefront and celebrated for the amazing value they bring to every aspect of life on earth.

Plant species and their habitats often require specific conservation actions distinct from other taxa and the new GSPC guides those actions at national and regional levels

We all have a part to play in helping wild plants to thrive, now and for future generations.

What are the Plant Actions?

The new Global Strategy for Plant Conservation is a set of 22 Plant Actions that support the implementation of the 3 Goals and 23 Targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, now renamed as The Biodiversity Plan, adopted at CoP15, Montreal 2022.

The 22 Plant Actions are a guide to the conservation of wild plants, medicinal plants, and the wild relatives of our crops.

The specific Actions are set to be discussed and formally approved at CoP 16, in Cali, Colombia, on 21 October -2 November 2024.

What you can do

Whether you are a government, global institution, NGO, company, educational institution, indigenous people, local community, landowner, farmer or an individual, these Plant Actions are your guide to including the conservation of wild plants within your own programmes and activities.

Plantlife will be developing this toolkit over the coming months with information, resources and case studies to inspire and support everyone to play their part in creating a plant rich world.

If you’d like to contribute your resources, information, experience and success stories to this developing toolkit please contact  Claire Rumsey. We would love to hear from you!

The Plant Actions

Click on the images below to learn more about each of the Plant Actions.

Reducing threats to biodiversity

Spatial planning

Ecological restoration

Important Plant Areas

Species & genetic diversity

Sustainable harvest & trade

Invasive species

Pollution

Climate solutions

Meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing

Plants for people

Crops & production land

Native species

Urban spaces

Benefit sharing

Tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming

Mainstreaming

Sustainable use

Sustainable consumption

Safe biotechnologies

Financial resources

Capacity building

Awareness & information

Traditional knowledge

Gender equality

More on the Plant Actions

For a list of the actions please click arrow below.

  • NoGlobal Plants Actions
    1Identify and map plant species and Important Plant Areas to inform land use planning.
    2 Recover degraded land using a diversity of native plants. 
    3 Identify, protect and manage Important Plant Areas. 
    4Stop the extinction of wild plants and recover threatened species. 
    Maintain the genetic diversity of the plants we rely on. 
    5 Ensure the harvest and trade of wild plants is sustainable. 
    6 Control and monitor the impact of invasive species on native plants. 
    7 Protect wild plants from pollution. 
    8 Use native wild plants for climate solutions. 
    9 Support Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to sustainably manage the wild plants that are important to them. 
    10Restore the diversity of plants important for sustainable farming, forestry and fisheries. 
    11Use native species for ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions. 
    12Create plant-rich green and blue spaces in towns and cities. 
    13Share the benefits of wild plant resources and knowledge fairly. 
    14Integrate plant diversity into policy, planning and strategies.    
    15Promote sustainable practice in the commercial use of wild plants.
    16Provide information, guidance, education and research to support sustainable use and consumption of wild plants. 
    17Support developing countries to benefit from safe biotechnologies and sustainable agrifood systems. 
    No particular plant conservation action is required under Target 18, except to support its achievement
    19Mobilise resources for plant conservation action. 
    20Develop skills, capacity and partnerships for plant conservation and ecological restoration. 
    21Develop public awareness, information systems and citizen science programmes to support plant conservation action. 
    22Respect and safeguard the botanical knowledge and practices of indigenous people and local communities.  
    23Respect women’s role as essential knowledge holders and uphold their rights to participate, make decisions and access plant resources. 

     

Read the full actions here.

Read the technical rationale for the Actions here.