SANA’A, July 24 — Yemen signed a National Biodiversity Planning project on Tuesday which supports implementing an agreement on biodiversity in Yemen between 2012 and 2020.

A statement issued by the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) stated that the Global Environment Facility-funded project, which costs $250,000, aims to help Yemen to fulfill its commitments regarding the biodiversity agreement that was signed in Nagoya, Japan in 2010.

Abdulhakeem Al-Qadasi, Director of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Department in the General Authority for Environmental Protection, said that the project aims to administratively and financially reform the outdated national strategy of biodiversity.

Al-Qadasi told the Yemen Times that the project, which will be implemented in two years by a cadre of Yemenis, intends to make the fifth biodiversity report within the project’s first year.

The original strategy intended to improve nature reserves like Bora’a, Otma and Hawf which deserve protection for their role in maintaining the environmental balance.

“Yemen will receive large investments in biodiversity from this project. Several Yemeni areas were announced as nature reserves and others will be,” Al-Qadasi noted.

A number of worksheets presented at the National Green Economy Conference, held in June 2012 in Hodeida, pointed out that the nature reserves in Yemen, particularly Bora’a in Hodeida, Hawf in Mahra, and Al-Hoswa in Aden face problems like logging, grazing and road construction.

The National Biodiversity Planning Project is the second Yemeni project in biodiversity. The first project was provided by the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and funded by the UNDP.