The Draft Strategy recommends enhanced regional cooperation to conserve and sustainably use Arctic biodiversity, to ensure opportunities for indigenous and other local people in the conservation effort and to improve education and public awareness. The Draft Strategy is closely linked to the goals and many of the provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity which all eight countries have signed and seven have ratified. Threats to Arctic Species and Ecosystems CAFF has continued to investigate threats to Arctic biodiversity and has listed 21 on its 1995 Matrix of Threats. From those, three groups are identified as most widespread and serious and have been selected for further evaluation and recommendations. They include industrial development, infrastructure buildup, increase in tourism, fisheries practices, over-exploitation and hunting pressures and oil pollution.
Climate change is viewed as an overriding, all-pervasive threat.
CAFF will apply a Framework for Threats Work it has developed. To supplement its own work, CAFF suggests cooperation within the AEPS to address the full spectrum of threats to Arctic biodiversity. Analyses show that most Arctic biodiversity monitoring is traditionally of fauna species, particularly economically important ones, rather than of vegetation or ecosystems. The results are routinely put to practical uses such as to set hunting regulations and quotas. CAFF sees a need to increase biodiversity monitoring at a circumpolar level and is investigating a Pan-Arctic Monitoring Network.