On 10 October 2006, the Timor-Leste government signed the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) and became a Party to the Convention on 8 January 2007. As a signatory to
the CBD, Timor-Leste is required to fulfil the CBD’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas
(PoWPA), adopted by the 7th CBD Conference of Parties in 2004. The PoWPA is a global
action plan to address the impediments to establishment of protected areas. It is an
ambitious programme with 92 different activities, of which 13 are deemed critical. One of
these activities is to assess ecological gaps in the protected area network. As Timor-Leste is
a new country it is currently at the beginning of building their protected area network. This
report provides the first ecological gap assessment of the protected area network and
outlines recommendations on future activities that we hope will aid the implementation
and building of formal marine and terrestrial protected area networks.