Jan 09, 2023
The biggest biodiversity conference in a decade, COP15, just ended, with progress towards protecting 30 percent of the world’s terrestrial and marine habitats by 2030, also known as the 30x30 goal. The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) joined COP15 to share learnings from the Forest Investment Program (FIP), the Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM), and discuss the Nature, People and Climate (NPC) investment program. “This is the first time that the Climate Investment Funds are in a biodiversity COP, which is also a signal,” said CIF’s CEO Mafalda Duarte. Her remarks drew on a recent blog where she connects the dots between the biodiversity and climate crisis, and concluded a CIF-led event at the COP15 Canada Pavilion entitled ‘Nurturing Nature: Financing Nature-Based Solutions for Climate, Biodiversity and Communities’.
This event took place on Women and Youth day and featured speakers from these important groups in CIF partner countries in Africa, Latin America, and Europe. It opened with a keynote by Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former Minister of Environment and Principal at Climate and Nature Solutions. After discussing the need to align the biodiversity and climate agendas, she recognized the role played by the Climate Investment Funds on bringing funding to scale, innovative financing tools and patient capital. “It is very exciting to learn about the Nature, People and Climate platform. It’s unique, it’s innovative, and it’s going to provide direct support for indigenous peoples and local communities. It breaks down the silos between climate mitigation and adaptation, looking at forestry and coastal resilience. It brings together the Multilateral Development Banks. () They often work autonomously, and you need a vehicle that will bring them together and address frontier climate and nature challenges that MDBs and governments can’t address on their own.”
Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet, Founder & President, African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF), Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award Recipient & UNEP Champion of the Earth, shared a testimony on her DGM-supported forest preservation work with women groups. REFACOF supports women in West and Central Africa to plant soy or cassava agroforestry systems on degraded land. “Now our project is to plant 20 million trees as our contribution to ecosystem restoration. The DGM is for us a great opportunity to have direct funding to upscale what we are doing,” she said. The UNEP Champion of the Earth ended her remarks with a plea to support African women: “We are here for the global framework on biodiversity. Who is going to implement? Women, the youth, and the girls on the ground. () Give the support to women, and you will have the framework implemented.”
From Mexico’s Oaxaca region, Rocío Aguilar Méndez, DGM Indigenous Youth Fellow, discussed her work with 600 Zapotecan indigenous coffee agroforestry farmers. “We know our farmers, we know what the situation is like on the ground, and we have learned a lot from our parents and our ancestors. () We are working on preserving our environment following the world view of Indigenous people,” she said.
The big picture was provided by Johan Rockstrom, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam, who said during the event: “If it was not for Nature, we would have already breached the Paris agreement threshold of 1.5°C.() Science shows they are feasible pathways still available, but we need to urgently and collectively act on a global scale.” As part of his prescribed agenda, he recommends scaling “nature-based solutions for health of people and planet, and ensure they are scientifically robust.”
Representatives of the Dutch, German, Spanish and Swedish governments also joined the panel to share their countries commitment to nature-based solutions and the Nature, People and Climate investment program. They all support NPC, together with Italy and the UK, and discussed how to narrow the widening nature finance gap. According to the United Nations, annual nature investments from G20 nations alone need to increase by an additional $165 billion per year – an increase of 140% from existing levels – to realize biodiversity, land restoration and climate targets by 2050. Nature investments are urgently needed and have the potential to benefit climate, the economy, and people. Developing nations are ready to play their part and engage in nature-based programs, as demonstrated by the demand seen after NPC was announced this summer, when one-third of the developing world, or 55 countries, formally applied for funding. Thanks to the partners of the NPC program, Africa’s Zambezi’s River Basin, Egypt, Fiji, and the Dominican Republic, who introduced their plan during the COP15 event, will be able to pursue their nature-base solutions ambitions.
