By Mafalda Duarte
Let’s make one thing crystal-clear: the climate crisis is a biodiversity crisis.
Too often, climate change and biodiversity loss are framed as distinct challenges, when the reality is that they are inextricably linked. We’re seeing in real time the very real impacts of rising temperatures on animal species and the natural habitats they call home. Wildlife populations have declined by an average of nearly 70% between 1970 and 2018.
Conversely, the precious environments they inhabit—the forests, lands, and waters that make Earth so biologically diverse—also play a role in mitigating the worst effects of climate change. They serve as carbon sinks that absorb up to half of the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by man-made activities.
The overlaps between climate and biodiversity are not just evident to scientists and researchers. Policymakers are taking note, too. For the first time in history, this year’s UN climate summit enshrined the importance of nature-based solutions to the climate crisis—so essential to biodiversity—in the conference’s decision text.
Negotiators at the COP27 conference stressed the need to urgently address “the interlinked global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss” and “the vital importance of protecting, conserving, restoring and sustainably using nature and ecosystems for effective and sustainable climate action.”
I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m proud that the Climate Investment Funds (CIF)—one of the world’s largest multilateral funds for climate action across the developing world—will be at the UN Biodiversity Conference, known as COP15, this year for the first time ever to highlight CIF investments in nature-based solutions to climate change. It’s an important milestone for nature finance, not to mention CIF itself, which has funded cutting-edge climate solutions for nearly 15 years.
Leaders from around the globe are gathered in Montreal to set new goals for nature over the next decade, and chart a course for delivering them. The latter will require more than lofty speeches. The international community must come together and mobilize the finance required to scale nature-based solutions.
According to the UN, to meet key development targets annual nature investments from G20 nations alone would need to increase by an additional $165 billion per year. That’s a 140% jump from existing levels.
I’m pleased to say five countries are stepping up and making new pledges to narrow the nature finance gap in developing countries. As of today, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain have pledged more than $350 million to capitalize CIF’s Nature, People, and Climate investment platform, also known as CIF NPC.
The program pilots and scales transformative nature-based climate solutions in developing countries worldwide, starting in four countries and one region. They are Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Kenya, and Africa’s Zambezi River Basin Region, cutting across Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Tanzania.
Participating countries and regions are seeking finance to support a wide range of initiatives, including efforts in Egypt to promote sustainable agriculture along the Nile River, mangrove cultivation to better protect Fiji’s coastal communities from storm surges, investments to reduce methane emissions from rice production in the Dominican Republic, and the restoration of 30,000 hectares of degraded wetlands in south-central Africa’s Zambezi River Basin Region.
A key CIF NPC focus will be enabling Indigenous and local communities to lead, implement, and shape climate action locally and around the world. It seeks to replicate CIF’s successful Dedicated Grant Mechanism for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (DGM), which provides direct financing to empower Indigenous peoples and local communities to sustainably manage natural resources, restore land access through initiatives such as land titling programs, and fight climate change through the application of local and traditional knowledge.
As we race against the clock to implement solutions and prepare communities to face the impacts of climate change, let’s turn to nature for solutions—not to mention inspiration—as we do all what we can to reverse the trendlines of ecological disaster. Everywhere we look, we see potential solutions in nature, whether in forest conservation, sustainable farming, or wetland restoration. Our job now is to empower communities to put these solutions into practice.