At its seventh meeting, the Conference of the Parties established the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Review of Implementation of the Convention to, inter alia, consider progress in the implementation of the Convention and the Strategic Plan and achievements leading up to the 2010 target in line with the multi-year programme of work for the Conference of the Parties, to review the impacts and effectiveness of existing processes under the Convention, and to consider ways and means of identifying and overcoming obstacles to the effective implementation of the Convention (decision VII/30, paragraph 23).

The first meeting of the Working Group on Review of Implementation of the Convention was held in Montreal in September 2005. The meeting adopted nine recommendations which were considered by the Conference of the Parties at its eighth meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, in March 2006. The second meeting of the Working Group was held at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris from 9 to 13 July 2007. The Working Group adopted five recommendations, which were considered by the Conference of the Parties at its ninth meeting, held in Bonn in May 2008.

At its ninth meeting, the Conference of the Parties, requested the Executive Secretary to make the necessary arrangements to convene a third meeting of the Working Group on the Review of Implementation, and requested the Working Group to prepare, for consideration and adoption by the Conference of the Parties at its tenth meeting, a revised and updated Strategic Plan including a revised biodiversity target, as well as a multi-year programme of work for the period 2011–2022, and proposals for the periodicity of meetings after 2010, and also to undertake an in-depth review of progress towards goals 1 and 4 of the current Strategic Plan (decision IX/9). The Conference of the Parties assigned further tasks to the Working Group in decisions IX/11, IX/14 and IX/15 as specified in the annotated agenda.

The third meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Review of Implementation of the Convention was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 24 to 28 May 2010. The meeting was held back-to-back with the fourteenth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA).