Apr 19, 2022
The recent Geneva gathering of global leaders for the UN convention on Biological Diversity made positive advances in a deal to save nature. The Climate Investment Funds (CIF)’ new Nature, People & Climate (NPC) program is uniquely placed to help.
With the aim of achieving the equivalent of a Paris type agreement for nature at COP15 of the UN Convention on Biodiversity later this year, national governments, intergovernmental scientific bodies, and other stakeholders convened in Geneva for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) negotiations on a biodiversity framework agreement.
This gathering, the first in person for two years, was an important staging post before the upcoming COP15 meeting in China, where a final agreement to save nature will be discussed and ratified.
Set against the backdrop of stark assessments from the scientific community about the scale of biodiversity losses, the delegates arrived in Geneva with the goal of refining the draft of the CBD’s ‘Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
The GBF seeks to guide our collective actions and sets targets to protect our natural capital through to 2050. It is this framework that must be agreed and adopted in Kunming – host city for COP15.
How climate finance can help
The scope of the ambitions laid out in the CBD framework suggests that the CIF’s model of delivering flexible, secure, highly concessional climate finance and co-funding will be an effective tool to rapidly scale up the actions required in the framework.
Moreover, the experience gleaned from the CIF’s impressive portfolio of nature-based solutions can be bought to bear – most notably the $1.2 billion Pilot Project for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the $70 million Forest Investment Program (FIP) – which tackles forest loss and degradation by empowering local communities and has seen 41.3million hectares of land brought into sustainable land management practises and interventions in 23 countries.
Additionally, the design of the CIF’s new Nature, People and Climate program uniquely positions it to help meet the draft’s objectives head on.
How the Biodiversity Framework goals align with the design of the CIF’s Nature Program
CIF’s nature program will ensure the fairness stipulated in the CBD’s draft framework as it’s designed to empower indigenous peoples and local communities who stand to shoulder the biggest losses from the degrading of natural systems in which they are closely linked, to both lead and benefit from climate change solutions.
Similarly, the program is built to benefit biodiversity. By recognising the interdependency between land use, climate change and people it aims to manage these complex relationships and balance the trade-offs to protect, restore and connect a diversity of ecosystems across multiple landscapes and land uses.
The multiple benefits targeted by the Nature Program include:
- Biodiversity conservation
- GHG emissions mitigation
- Strengthening the resilience of people and lands to the impacts of Climate Change
- Sustainably supporting livelihoods and communities
Another meeting to further refine the framework and agree on language that will be presented at COP15 will now take place in Nairobi in June.
Whatever form the final draft of the CBD Framework agreement takes, CIF is poised and ready to contribute its experience and expertise to help achieve the objectives set to be adopted at the vitally important CBD COP 15 gathering in China.
Saving nature starts with climate finance.
