Editor's note: Decision Makers is a global platform for decision makers to share their insights on events shaping today's world. Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is the global leader of Climate and Energy at World Wide Fund for Nature, and Stewart Maginnis is the deputy director general at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The article reflects the authors' opinions, and not necessarily those of CGTN.
The pressures on our natural world have never been greater. We need every tool at our disposal to mobilize resources to protect ecosystem integrity and restore nature. Yet, even as negotiators finalize work to agree on the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) that could place us on a pathway to a nature-positive world, they risk ignoring a vital means to mobilize resources.
Nature-based solutions can address societal challenges and provide benefits for biodiversity and climate, along with other positive outcomes. They can provide a bridge between climate action and nature protection. But it's all the more baffling that, as negotiators head into the final days of negotiations in Montreal, they struggle to reach an agreement over the role of nature-based solutions.
References to nature-based solutions are bracketed within the framework, meaning there is no consensus among the Parties. It has been the source of serious disagreement with some countries refusing to countenance their inclusion within the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Setting the right standard
In its global standard for nature-based solutions, the International Union For Conservation of Nature (IUCN) explains that nature-based solutions combine one (or more) of the three main types of conservation actions – conservation through protection, restoration, and sustainable use – with efforts to address major societal challenges such as climate change, human health, food security, and disaster risk reduction among others.
The nature-based solutions concept is grounded in the science and practice of the ecosystem approach, helping to grow its reach among new sectors and communities of practice.
The opening ceremony of the second phase of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Montreal, Canada, December 7, 2022. /Xinhua
Nature-based solutions are not an attempt to turn nature into a commodity to be traded. They are not an offset mechanism to give the buyer a free pass to destroy nature. They are not monoculture plantations, nor a means to disenfranchise Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Nature-based solutions have been recognized formally by several global agreements: Earlier this year, the UN Environment Assembly passed a resolution to adopt the concept; in May 2022, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification called upon its parties to explore nature-based solutions to meet its objectives; the Ramsar Wetlands Convention encourages parties to deploy nature-based solutions; and at climate negotiations at COP27, the cover decision text encouraged parties to "consider, as appropriate, nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches."
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the only relevant international environmental agreement not to have acknowledged the potential of nature-based solutions.
The CBD might have no say over how the rules governing nature-based solutions develop. The critical international agreement on biodiversity would not be involved in establishing the guardrails for their use. It would also risk a lack of compatibility with other aspects of the GBF's implementation.
Making targets harder to reach
Not reaching agreement would mean that countries could find themselves unable to turn to nature-based solutions for resources to help them meet whatever targets emerge from the GBF process.
Nature-based solutions are getting implemented in projects, by local communities, as well as included in national policies. Rich-world and developing country governments, the private sector and other non-state actors recognize their ability to deliver positive social and ecological impact at scale. It would be perverse if that impact couldn't be harnessed to achieve the goals of the GBF.
It's vital that nature-based solutions proceed with the highest standards. They should be developed in line with IUCN standards. They must recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Parties to COP15 should embrace nature-based solutions, tap into their potential and guide their development. A failure to grasp that opportunity would slow down the development of nature-based solutions and make the CBD less relevant.
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