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.
COP16 confronts “huge” challenge of protecting 30% of world’s land and sea
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.
Colombia adds nature to the mix with its $40-billion energy transition plan
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.
Biodiversity finance grew ahead of COP16 but came mostly as loans, says OECD
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
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
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Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around