Notes

At IWC67 in October 2018 the Commission endorsed a proposal from New Zealand to revise the existing template for voluntary conservation reports and develop an integrated database. The detailed proposal, which includes the detailed rationale for changing the reporting template, is in Document IWC/67/CC/10 (also available to this meeting as document CC/68A/INFO/05).

This will be a move from static written reports to an online database, publicly accessible from the IWC website and searchable by country or conservation theme. The database would be populated and updated by countries and the template for submission would be revised for alignment with the Strategic Plan and Workplan of the Conservation Committee. Where possible, this would be made interoperable with other IWC databases particularly National Progress Reports submitted to the SC. This would help streamline the reporting requirements on Contracting Governments, and improve the accessibility, effectiveness and reach of information submitted in Voluntary Conservation Reports.