An Lambrechts is a senior campaign strategist at Greenpeace International; Cyril Kormos is founder and executive director of Wild Heritage; and Virginia Young is director of the International Forests and Climate Programme at the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society.
Biodiversity and the climate are inextricably linked. As we lose or degrade ecosystems and their plants and animals, we release the carbon they have stored back into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. And as climate change worsens, we lose even more biodiversity to heat, drought and fire.
On the other hand, protecting and restoring ecosystems so that they retain or recover their biodiversity is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight climate change.
Despite this, governments continue to address these interlinked crises in isolation, holding separate talks on the global climate and on biodiversity, despite a compelling body of scientific evidence that demonstrates an urgent need for collaborative and synergistic solutions.
This artificial split is especially odd as the UN climate and biodiversity conventions emerged together from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And there were very early calls for integrated work programmes.
To this day, it remains a huge, missed opportunity for holistic, integrated and mutually reinforcing solutions. It is also an opportunity we can’t afford to squander as both crises accelerate rapidly and approach tipping points that could be catastrophic for all of humanity.
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Retaining and restoring the integrity of “high carbon” ecosystems like peatlands, mangroves, wetlands, forests and marshes, which store large amounts of carbon, is critical in our fight to limit warming to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
They are the most effective way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The higher their integrity, the greater their ability to safely store carbon over the long term. And biodiversity plays an important role in underpinning the integrity of ecosystems.
By protecting and restoring the natural composition and patterns of biodiversity in ecosystems, we not only preserve biodiversity, but also minimise the risk of losing the vast amounts of carbon stored in ecosystems to the atmosphere.
Shared solutions for twin crises
Protecting and restoring biodiversity is our best tool to help ecosystems adapt to the impacts of climate change we are already locked in to, and to mitigate the impact of climate disasters and adapt to our changing world.
Yet the pivotal role that high-biodiversity, high-carbon ecosystems play, including primary and old growth forests, is under-recognised in international fora, including – and notably – in the biodiversity and climate COPs.
The need to ensure synergies between biodiversity protection and climate action has come up at least a dozen times in meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But the core issue – the need to protect and restore ecosystem integrity in order to maximise synergies – has yet to be integrated into these discussions.
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Thus, we still lack a proper basis to develop a joint, integrated framework between the two conventions, conversations remain siloed, and the critical importance of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity remains under-appreciated. Indeed, biodiversity is still far too often viewed as a useful, but largely non-essential “co-benefit” of climate action. This is a huge impediment to progress.
The most fundamental failure appears to be that neither Convention fully recognises that we cannot solve the climate crisis unless we solve the biodiversity crisis at the same time; and that keeping ecosystem carbon out of the atmosphere is dependent on doing two things simultaneously: reducing fossil fuel emissions, and reducing loss and damage to carbon-dense ecosystems and the biodiversity that underpins them.
Protecting ecosystem “integrity”
National-level CBD or biodiversity focal points often do not collaborate with their climate counterparts while many climate negotiators fail to recognise the risk that some “climate solutions” pose to biodiversity, including large-scale afforestation projects, bioenergy projects and the construction of dams and renewable energy projects in protected areas and other irrecoverable natural areas.
At the global level, parties at the UNFCCC still fail to account for the importance of protecting and restoring carbon stocks within the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) rules, even as state parties are allowed to offset fossil fuel emissions through forestry-based carbon offsets.
This problematic interpretation of “net zero” comes in part from the absence of ecosystem integrity as a measure. A joint work programme should establish the grounds for concomitant approaches like ecosystem integrity, which would distinguish the superior carbon storage attributes of high-integrity ecosystems like primary and old-growth forests.
Recognising which types of ecosystems are effective in storing carbon safely for the long term would be a major step forward in ensuring effective management of natural carbon sinks. COP28’s global stocktake was successful in mentioning “ecosystem integrity”, but concrete action to take a more holistic approach and include it as a central starting point for nature-climate action is still missing.
Joint work programme needed
Currently, the CBD is a few steps ahead of the UNFCCC in the synergies debate. At a biodiversity meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in May, delegates called for greater collaboration between the biodiversity and climate COPs, including a joint work programme between the conventions to harmonise biodiversity and climate actions.
This could encompass direct changes to how governments design their contributions to meeting the goals and targets of both the biodiversity and climate COPs, and avoid negative trade-offs between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the UNFCCC and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to the CBD.
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At the biodiversity COP16 in Colombia this month and the COP29 UN climate summit in November, governments should include a call for such a work programme, which would provide the space and time for it to be operationalised in 2025 at COP30 in Brazil.
Synergistic climate-biodiversity approaches centered on ecosystem integrity and primary ecosystems can also help unlock innovative and scaled up finance for protecting and restoring ecosystems in large landscapes while supporting Indigenous peoples and communities.
When rivers dry up in the Amazon and we see flooding in the Sahara and Saudi Arabia it should be obvious that we are fast running out of time. The scientific case for integrated solutions that maximise both biodiversity and climate mitigation benefits is clear and strong. Now we need decision-makers to act.
The post It’s time to pull down the UN’s artificial divide between biodiversity and climate appeared first on Climate Home News.
It’s time to end the UN’s artificial divide between biodiversity and climate
Mae Buenaventura is the manager of the debt justice programme of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, a regional alliance of peoples’ movements, community organizations, coalitions, NGOs and networks
A potentially historic shift in public debt governance is set to unfold in Washington DC this week as Global South governments take a collective stand to stop a “silent killer” of development financing.
The first-ever UN-hosted borrowers’ forum will officially be launched on April 15 on the sidelines of the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Led by five convening countries – Zambia, Egypt, Nepal, the Maldives and Pakistan – the initiative is one of the key wins of last year’s 4th Financing for Development Conference (FFD4) in Sevilla, Spain.
The forum’s mandate is to establish a platform for borrower countries, supported by a UN secretariat, “to discuss technical issues, share information and experiences in addressing debt challenges, increase access to technical assistance and capacity-building in debt management, coordinate approaches and strengthen borrower countries’ voices in the global debt architecture”.
Instead of facing lenders alone, these countries will now use a UN-backed platform to share technical expertise and coordinate their approach to a global debt system that is fundamentally broken.
Debt grips climate-vulnerable nations
The human cost of the current debt architecture is staggering. According to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, more than 40% of the global population – roughly 3.4 billion people – live in countries where the government is forced to spend more on debt payments than on the health, education and social protection of its citizens.
In so-called low-income countries, governments spend an average of 7.5% of their total budgets on debt service, with interest payments consuming up to 20% of total government revenue in these regions.
The Philippines is a case study in this financial stranglehold. It is part of a global majority forced to watch its public services crumble and infrastructure lag while its wealth is siphoned off to satisfy foreign lenders.
The policy of automatic appropriations – a legacy of the rule of late former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – mandates that debt servicing takes precedence over any other public expenditure, effectively placing the demands of lenders above the needs of the Filipino people. Even as it faces a $1.5 trillion regional financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, its hands remain tied by a legal framework that values credit ratings over human lives.
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As a “middle-income country” (MIC), the Philippines is stuck in a frustrating purgatory. It is often deemed “too wealthy” for the G20’s debt-relief framework, yet too poor to absorb global economic shocks. Last year, Finance Undersecretary Joven Balbosa hit the nail on the head when he called for support that goes “beyond the simplistic income categorization” that ignores a country’s actual vulnerabilities.
Without an inclusive and equitable global debt architecture, nations including the Philippines are left to navigate catastrophic climate risks and economic shocks with zero fiscal breathing space.
No respite during climate disasters
The regional evidence of this systemic failure is everywhere. Take Pakistan, which in 2022 was hit by catastrophic flooding that submerged a third of the country and caused billions in losses. Despite this climate-driven disaster, World Bank data shows that Pakistan made payments in 2023 of $11.8 billion for public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) external debt, while its PPG external debt reached $93 billion that same year, surpassing pre-pandemic debt of $87 billion (2020).
Sri Lanka followed IMF prescriptions throughout 16 lending programs since 1991, only to become the first Asian country this century to default. Its MIC status prevents application for debt relief and restructuring measures. Today, the Sri Lankan people bear the brunt of harsh conditionalities, including raising VAT from 8% to 15%, slashing food and fuel subsidies, and the erosion of hard-earned worker pensions.
Currently, the global rules of lending and borrowing are set by a “creditors’ club” composed of the IMF, the World Bank and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable it set up, and the Paris Club.
These institutions measure “debt sustainability” through a narrow lens of a country’s capacity to make timely repayments. They largely ignore internal economic inequalities, gender disparities and the existential threat of climate change.
Crises should trigger debt service cancellation
By organising the new borrowers’ forum, the Global South is signalling that the era of passive “standard-setting” by lenders is over.
The ultimate goal for global civil society and debt justice movements is the establishment of a UN Debt Convention; a democratic, binding and inclusive framework that governs both lenders and borrowers. This mechanism would ensure that debt restructuring and cancellation are sufficient to allow countries to fulfill their international human rights obligations and implement necessary climate actions.
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To be truly transformative, debt sustainability analyses must align with human rights and sustainable development needs. This means conducting impact assessments – both before and after loans are issued – to identify “illegitimate” debts that do not benefit the public.
Crucially, we need an automatic debt service cancellation mechanism that triggers during extreme climatic, environmental or health shocks. We also need a binding global debt registry to ensure that every loan is transparent and subject to public scrutiny.
Whether the borrowers’ forum becomes a true milestone depends on its courage to challenge the status quo. We can no longer allow debt to act as a “silent killer” of our future. It is time to demand a financial system that serves humanity, not just the balance sheets of the powerful.
The post Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks
Greenpeace and allies will be protesting outside Woodside’s Annual General Meeting to show the WA and federal governments strong community opposition to Woodside’s proposal to drill for gas at Scott Reef.
What: Protest outside Woodside Energy’s Annual General Meeting
When: 8am Thursday 23rd April 2026Where: Kagoshima Park (on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Bolton Avenue)
What’s at stake
Scott Reef is a pristine ocean ecosystem off the north-west coast of Australia.
It is home to endangered and endemic species, including pygmy blue whales and the dusky sea snake, and a nesting ground for green sea turtles. Scott Reef is a place of extraordinary natural beauty, and a vital marine environment that supports a wide range of marine life.
What Woodside is proposing
Dirty fossil fuel corporation, Woodside Energy, is seeking approval to drill more than 50 gas wells underneath and around Scott Reef as part of its Browse project.
The gas would be extracted and transported to the Burrup Hub, the most polluting fossil fuel project in Australia. This proposal would industrialise the doorstep of Australia’s largest freestanding oceanic reef system – threatening the marine life that relies on it and the climate.
Why this can’t go ahead
The WA Environmental Protection Authority has already identified the risks of this project as “unacceptable”, issuing a preliminary rejection.
Serious concerns include:
- The risk of an oil spill
- Impacts on pygmy blue whales
- Damage to green sea turtle nesting grounds
These risks are severe, and potentially irreversible. But the decision hasn’t been made yet. The project is still being assessed.
The Federal Environment Minister is approaching a decision that will determine whether Scott Reef is protected – or vulnerable to decades of industrial gas destruction.
This is a defining moment.
Make opposition visible
Across Australia, people are speaking out to protect Scott Reef and oppose Woodside’s Browse project.
Showing that opposition is visible, coordinated and growing helps increase pressure on decision-makers ahead of this critical decision.
Join the protest
A protest outside Woodside’s AGM is a key public moment to demonstrate opposition and help protect Scott Reef.
Kagoshima Park (on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Bolton Avenue)
8am, Thursday 23rd April 2026
Join the protest and help show how many people support protecting Scott Reef before the government makes its decision.
Join Greenpeace to save Scott Reef from Woodside’s dirty gas
As demand for whale meat declines at home, Norway exports it to Japan, markets it to tourists and sells it online as dog food.
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