In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro and attended by over 150 governments. One landmark international agreement that resulted was acceptance of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This recognised for the first time that biological diversity is "a common concern for humankind", with each country needing to take responsibility in order to halt the global loss of biodiversity. The Irish Government signed the CBD in 1992, and ratified it in 1996.

One of the main obligations is that each Contracting Party develop national strategies or plans for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.  Implemented by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Ireland’s first National Biodiversity Plan was published in 2002 (Action 10), with the 2^nd and 3^rd action plans in 2011 and 2017 respectively. The third National Biodiversity Plan (https://www.npws.ie/legislation/national-biodiversity-plan) prioritised the development of Local Biodiversity Action Plans to effectively implement actions to conserve biodiversity at a community level. As of December 2022, 6 extra Local Biodiversity Action Plans were in place when compared to the last reporting period (up to December 2020) in place.

Since the last reporting period in 2020, there has been an increase in the number of within county or community Biodiversity Action Plans published. Some of these local area plans are funded under the Community Foundation Ireland programme. A website was established to track and map Biodiversity Action Plans and can be found here: https://actionforbiodiversity.ie/action-plans/.  It is important to note that the quality of the Biodiversity Action Plans vary across county, with some being published as ad hoc appendices to the County Heritage Plans while others are ‘stand-alone’. Most Action Plans were also written before the publication of the 4^th National Biodiversity Action Plan so may potentially make little reference to the policy and goal ambitions of the newest National Plan. It is the role of the newly established Biodiversity Officer Programme to review local Biodiversity Action Plans.

The 4^th National Biodiversity Action Plan, Actions for Biodiversity 2023-2027 was launched on 24/01/2024.