Kenya Private Sector Alliance, represented by Ms Faith Ngige, engaged with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), represented by Senior Officer, Climate and Biodiversity, Ms Catherine Mungai, on 26^th January 2023 at KEPSA offices. The meeting focused on exploring a partnership between KEPSA and the IUCN in areas of convergence.

IUCN is an international membership organization that assists societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. It also hosts an extensive network of experts that can assist the KEPSA Environment, Water and Natural Resources Sector Board and the Climate Business Information Network Kenya (CBIN-K) with analysis, tools, and knowledge, especially in matters involving ecosystems and biodiversity.

Population, urbanization, unsustainable economic growth models, changes in land and seascape use, agricultural expansion, climate change impacts, and water scarcity among others, have resulted in biodiversity loss and the impact of climate change in light of massive poverty and social inequality. The private sector's efforts to promote socioeconomic growth have an impact on the environment, leading to the need for proactive green business models as well as strategic business actions to reduce negative environmental impact, necessitating partnership and collaboration between the two institutions.

From the engagement, some of the areas of partnership include capacity building on awareness creation of the UN Bio-diversity conference resolutions impact on business, climate change and forest restoration, climate change finance solutions focusing on biodiversity, costing of environmental training programs and events, and resource mobilization on restoration, among others. The two institutions will develop a partnership framework to further guide the collaboration.