Marco Lambertini, Special Envoy, WWF International

Earth Day is a moment to celebrate life in all its breathtaking diversity. It’s also a painful reminder that we are failing in our collective responsibility to live in harmony with nature by transitioning to a net zero emissions, nature-positive economy that balances the needs of present and future generations and preserves the diversity of life on Earth.

With nature in freefall, climate breakdown intensifying, food and water crises spreading, and a world in conflict, the evidence suggests that at the halfway point for delivery on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — agreed to by UN member states in 2015 to address global social, economic, and environmental challenges — we are going backwards.

And yet we have never had a better opportunity to turn things around and realize the promise of the SDGs — prosperity for all on a healthy planet.

Over the past year, through the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the new agreement on marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), and related resolutions on nature-based solutions and the right to a healthy environment, the world has signaled its commitment to a nature-positive future.

This has the potential to be game-changing. Healthy ecosystems and the services they provide — from clean air and water, to sustainable economies and a stable climate — underpin all the SDGs, and are the foundation upon which lasting peace and prosperity can be built.

At the UN’s High-Level Political Forum in July — where specific SDGs are reviewed every year — and the SDG Summit in September, world leaders must endorse and scale the approaches, resources, and financial architecture necessary to sustain and restore natural systems, and begin to forge an inclusive, nature-positive global economy.

The Forum’s progress review this year focuses on Goals 6 on clean water and sanitation, 7 on affordable and clean energy, 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure, 11 on sustainable cities and communities, and 17 on partnerships. Delivery on all of them, in one way or another, relies on nature.

On Goal 6, many countries are struggling to meet people’s basic needs. Nearly two billion people lack access to clean drinking water, half the world’s population has no safe sanitation, and even developed economies are suffering from drought, drying rivers, and water scarcity. Rectifying this requires countries to work together across borders to restore river basins and freshwater ecosystems in severe decline globally.

The Freshwater Challenge, the largest river and wetland restoration initiative in history launched last month at the UN Water Conference by Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Gabon, Mexico, and Zambia, offers a framework for change. Other governments and partners should join, and emulate countries such as Mexico that in 2018 set the pace for water security in the Latin American region by creating 10 water reserves covering 55% of the country’s surface water that will guarantee water supplies for 45 million people and critical ecosystems for the next half-century.

Nature’s role in Goal 7 on affordable and clean energy and in a just transition is also central. Renewable energy sources provided by the sun and wind are available in abundance, and replenished by nature. Solar and wind generation must displace fossil fuels for the energy sector to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and 90% of the world’s electricity could come from renewables by 2050. While this needs around $4 trillion annual investment in renewable energy until 2030, the reduction in pollution and climate impacts alone could save up to $4.2 trillion a year by 2030.

And at a community level, affordable nature-powered renewable energy offers benefits around the world. In Nunavut, for example, the hamlet of Gjoa Haven has formed Canada’s first Inuit energy co-operative to pilot solar, efficiency, and waste-to-heat solutions to reduce reliance on expensive polluting diesel fuel and transition to renewable energy.

Building for the future means respecting nature. Carefully blending new infrastructure with natural landscapes, and integrating ‘green’ and ‘grey’ systems in meeting Goal 9 would reduce costs, save lives, and increase resilience. And in city environments, where 75% of the global population is projected to be living by 2050, nature is no less critical. In delivering on Goal 11, green spaces in cities improve quality of life, combat air pollution, increase climate resilience, support biodiversity, and create jobs. In Milan, for example, the municipality and local citizens are using nature to improve city infrastructure and address environmental health risks such as pollution, flooding, and the ‘urban heat island’ effect.

All these examples confirm what the UN Secretary-General said last December in his State of the Planet address, “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century … the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

Ministers at the High Level Political Forum in July, and Heads of State joining the SDG Summit in September, should take note because by prioritizing nature, they have an opportunity to accelerate SDG delivery. Here’s how.

1. Recognise the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the new agreement on marine biodiversity, and related resolutions as the road maps for delivering on nature-related dimensions of the SDGs, including preserving remaining intact nature (at least 30%), restoring degraded ecosystems, transforming food systems, and securing deforestation- and conversion-free value chains.
2. Adopt whole-of-government, whole-of-society, and rights-based approaches to implementing these agreements and resolutions, including through transformative, high impact initiatives that together form an SDG acceleration package.
3. Apply and scale up equitable nature-based solutions that protect, restore, and sustainably use nature to advance delivery on net-zero emissions, and tackle the climate crisis while providing societal and economic benefits.
4. Mobilize all necessary means, including by closing climate and nature financing gaps, unlocking private and blended finance, aligning financial flows with social and environmental goals, and eliminating harmful subsidies for fossil fuels and agriculture.
5. Implement reforms that shape an equitable, net zero, nature-positive global financial system, and establish ways of measuring progress that look beyond GDP to planetary health and intergenerational well-being and equity.

With just seven years left to deliver on the SDGs, it’s time to repair our broken relationship with the planet and secure all life on Earth. The risks and costs of inaction are immense — but restoring our shared natural capital will help us shape a fairer, safer world, and ensure that we leave no one behind.

COP15 of the Convention of Biological Diversity is convening in Montreal to agree on the new Global Biodiversity Framework that will guide the conservation of nature globally over the next decade. This time, rights and equity need to be at the center of the framework and its implementation.

This is necessary for halting and reversing biodiversity loss in ways that are inclusive, just and sustainable. The framework needs to tackle the root causes of biodiversity loss in effective and equitable ways, and recognize the rights and contributions of all custodians of biodiversity, especially Indigenous Peoples and local communities, women, and youth, many of whom live in, care for, and depend on the most biodiverse places on Earth.

As the world celebrates Human Rights Day, we recognize that a human rights-based approach is an essential and enabling condition for biodiversity conservation and the resilience of life systems. This is urgently needed because the stakes are high, and if nature fails, the risks to our wellbeing and survival are immense.

Civil society, women, youth, and rights holders are all voicing the urgency of a global commitment to transforming the development model that has undermined biodiversity, the very foundation of life. We all need to act now to safeguard our one and common Earth for present and future generations.

In simple terms, implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework with a human rights-based approach means that biodiversity-related policies, governance, and management practices do not violate human rights, and enable the enjoyment of all human rights, including the right to a clean, sustainable and healthy environment.

A human rights-based approach is a pathway to recognizing and empowering all custodians of biodiversity and rights holders who have often been neglected, and ‘invisible’ in decision- and policy-making related to biodiversity. Without Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, and all custodians and defenders of biodiversity, mending our broken relationship with nature will be an impossible mission.

Applying human rights to halt and reverse biodiversity loss requires deep transformation in the model of production and consumption that we have created and that is based on the exploitation of nature for the benefit of a few. Businesses need to adhere to both environmental and human rights standards, and ensure that biodiversity is fully valued. Governance systems need to be inclusive and embed the knowledge and institutions of the rights holders who are most dependent on biodiversity, and who are also its best custodians. And Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and girls, and youth need to be part of any planning and decision-making that could impact their lives, waters and territories.

It is vital that the new Global Biodiversity Framework adopts a human rights-based approach. It is equally essential that we deliver on good intentions through strong and effective rights-based action to realize the vision of people living in harmony with nature.

We must be able to monitor and measure rights and equity. Accountability is part of our responsibility to nature and future generations. The first step is to have elements of human rights principles embedded in all relevant and actionable targets of the new Global Biodiversity Framework. Important, positive steps were secured during OEWG5 just prior to the beginning of COP15, with strong targets (20, 21, 22) on Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ rights, gender equality, the right to information, access to justice, and full and equitable participation. More can and must be done, including ensuring areas and territories conserved and sustainably used by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are recognized, respected, and appropriately supported, with their free and prior informed consent. This is achievable, and can be monitored and reported upon.

It is critically important that leaders meeting in Montreal this week embed human rights throughout the Global Biodiversity Framework. How well they are integrated will determine to what extent we can achieve our vision of living in harmony with nature, and whether we bequeath future generations a thriving planet.

Though the deep sea will remain as distant as outer space for most of humanity, this month we learned people care about the looming threat to its delicately balanced ecosystems. At a meeting of the International Seabed Authority Council, several countries joined the call for a “precautionary pause,” moratorium or an outright ban on deep seabed mining. The list now includes Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, France, Germany, New Zealand, Palau, Panama, Samoa and Spain, with several others indicating they would not be rushed into approving mining operations without sufficient environmental protections and scientific knowledge.

This interest in conserving the deep sea and seabed comes as we confront one of the most challenging and complex tasks humanity has ever faced: transitioning our entire global economy to a sustainable, carbon-neutral model. The shift away from fossil fuels is an essential component of this reset, but some are arguing that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and battery storage requires mining the ocean floor for these minerals. It’s a narrative that leverages the acknowledged need to make this transition urgently, but it ignores the facts about the knowns and unknowns of the deep ocean and seabed — our planet’s largest ecosystem by far.

Largely uncharted and little studied, we are only beginning to catalogue the species that dwell in the deep — a gap in our understanding that must be urgently filled given the global crisis of biodiversity loss, with a 69% average decline in wildlife populations since 1970. We do know the seabed is an important carbon sink — making the idea of mining operations that would churn up sediment and release that carbon an unlikely “solution” to our climate crisis. The potential harms extend to fisheries and food security, as well.

But with potential profits “littering” the ocean floor, some are allowing arguments in favour of deep seabed mining to gain traction. While WWF adheres to the science-supported precautionary principle to prevent environmental degradation, we also wanted to offer a data-based counterargument to the claim that deep-sea minerals are necessary for the green transition. We therefore commissioned an independent analysis of the critical minerals needed to support the transition to a green economy. The resulting report, The Future Is Circular: Circular Economy and Critical Minerals for the Green Transition, offers models that show the demand for critical minerals can be reduced by 58% from now to 2050 with new technology, circular economy models and recycling.

I agree with those who say we must take no options off the table in our quest to mitigate the climate crisis already unfolding. I share that grave sense of urgency. But we must not, once again, try to solve a problem while ignoring predicted consequences that could make the original problem even bigger. It is the very gravity of our current circumstances that requires us to act with utmost care for our planet’s life-support system: nature. Opening a new reckless, speculative extractive industry in our ocean is not the path to a nature-positive future and could even exacerbate the climate and biodiversity crises.

As the report outlines, the path forward includes a mix of technological innovation and changes to our current patterns of consumption and waste. With human ingenuity and an enlightened sense of self-preservation, this task is well within our collective capacity to achieve.

We will not halt climate change if we allow the crisis in nature to continue unabated. By the same token, if we are unable to limit warming to 1.5°C, climate change is likely to become the dominant cause of biodiversity loss in the coming decades. As the interlinkages between the climate system and nature on land, freshwater systems and in the oceans become ever clearer, so too does the urgent need to bring together our efforts to stop and reverse nature loss and decarbonise the global economy.

These interlinkages are highlighted throughout the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body responsible for explaining the latest climate science to the world’s policymakers. Its Sixth Assessment Report makes clear both that climate change is negatively impacting nature, but also that healthy nature is an ally that helps prevent climate breakdown and make us more resilient to a warming planet.

The science shows that Earth’s natural systems play a central role in regulating the climate — and in protecting us from the worst consequences of our actions. The world’s oceans, plants, animals and soils have absorbed 54% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions of the past 10 years. Critical ecosystems, such as wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs, help to shield us from the worsening hazards of extreme weather and sea-level rise.

But these natural systems are under threat and have their own limits. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are altering the ranges of animals and plants as they try to track their preferred climate, disrupting food webs and breeding patterns. Extreme weather events such as drought, wildfires and marine heatwaves, can destroy entire ecosystems and cause mass mortalities.

Beyond certain thresholds, some of the impacts become irreversible. The world’s tropical coral reefs face near-complete destruction even at 1.5°C of global warming. Once areas of rainforest become too degraded and fragmented, they can tip permanently into savannah. Sea-level rise will destroy many unique, biodiversity-rich low-lying coastal and river delta areas forever.

The risks threaten people as well as nature. Human societies, culture and our economy are fundamentally dependent upon nature — for food and water security, for air quality, for protection against disease, for energy, the list goes on. Many Indigenous Peoples and local communities depend directly on ecosystems for their survival.

Our new report — Climate’s Secret Ally: Uncovering the story of nature in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report — draws upon the IPCC’s work to highlight the interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and biodiversity loss, threatening the well-being of current and future generations and to make the case for better integrating nature into our response to the climate crisis.

It is clear that, without harnessing the ability of nature to store carbon and help regulate the climate, it will be impossible to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst risks of climate change. And without the protections healthy nature provides from climate hazards, more people will be at greater risk. Conserving 30 to 50% of land, freshwater and oceans areas could help safeguard nature, help protect the climate, and benefit people. Nature-based solutions, which protect and restore natural ecosystems, can both address climate change while supporting people and nature. Nature is a secret ally, but also untapped potential to help address the climate crisis.

But nature can’t do all the work alone. We must rapidly and equitably cut greenhouse gas emissions, with all sectors and all countries needing to contribute. We need to provide the financial resources to help the most vulnerable adapt.

By employing all of these actions we must change our current trajectory from around 2.5°C warming by the end of this century. There is no space for delays — overshooting 1.5°C poses terrible climate change risks on both people and nature.

We hope this report amplifies the important work of the IPCC by spotlighting the story of nature and climate change — including what it is doing for us already in the fight against climate change and how this is dangerously at risk. Nature can continue to help us in the fight against climate change, but only if we help it first.

By Maud Abdelli, Lead WWF Greening Financial Regulation Initiative

The global economy and financial system are deeply embedded in nature — they are dependent on a stable climate and important ecosystems. Yet a twin crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change is underway, posing significant risks to financial and price stability into the future.

Central banks and financial supervisors have a central role to play in protecting the financial sector and wider economy from these risks, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the combined economic consequences of this war and the slow recovery from two years of Covid, mean there is an even greater urgency to act now to spur an environmentally and socially sound economic transformation.

We already know well the potential and likely costs and risks of climate change. A global temperature rise of 2°C could wipe 11% off global GDP, increasing to 18% in the event of a 3.2°C rise, while extreme weather events, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and other impacts threaten financial stability, causing sudden economic shocks.

Less appreciated is the cost of biodiversity loss. The UK’s Dasgupta Review found that biodiversity loss could pose as grave a danger to humanity as climate change. The World Bank predicts that the loss of important ecosystem services could cost the global economy $2.7 trillion annually by 2030.

Together, biodiversity loss and climate change represent a major twin crisis. Climate change, along with human-caused habitat loss and other key drivers are accelerating nature loss, while the decline of biodiversity and ecosystems releases greenhouse gases and undermines nature’s ability to capture carbon, further driving climate change.

We are already witnessing the impacts of this crisis first hand, from the 2019–20 Australian wildfires that cost farmers up to AU$5billion to the California drought that has so far cost almost US$2billion and 14,000 jobs. Insured losses from natural disasters have increased 250% in the last 30 years.

The costs could be huge: under climate stress test scenarios, US bank Citigroup would have to raise over $73bn a year to cover climate losses alone. For every year of delay this twin crisis will escalate, and long-term risks will only grow.

Despite this mounting evidence, banks, insurers, asset managers and other financial institutions continue to invest in and underwrite activities that are driving the twin crisis.

This demands a robust, urgent response from central banks and supervisors.

Central banks and financial supervisors have recognized their mandate for managing climate- and biodiversity-related financial risks. G7 and G20 central banks and regulators have reiterated their commitment to integrating and managing these risks in their decision-making.

Yet the favoured tool of governments and regulators has so far been a growing number of mainly climate- related disclosure requirements.

Increased disclosure is certainly a welcome step, but disclosure alone falls far short of what is needed. ​​While the risks are already rapidly materialising, disclosures have also been slow to roll out: according to the ECB, only 15% of banks currently disclose CO2 emissions. Nature-related disclosures are some ways behind.

In the face of the risks and radical uncertainty of the twin crisis, central banks and supervisors can and must do more to take urgent precautionary action. Currently, they aren’t making full use of their market shaping role or using all the available tools to limit the negative environmental impacts generated by regulated actors, even though it is in their existing mandate to do so.

During the global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009, and the Covid pandemic, central banks and supervisors were able to act swiftly, with incomplete information, using all available tools and instruments to intervene. The same approach is needed today. As governments push to wean their economies off volatile fossil fuels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, regulators and central banks also have a key role to play in supporting a massive scale up of investment in clean energy and a just transition to a more sustainable economy.

We, WWF and more than 90 organisations, think tanks, coalitions and individual thought leaders and researchers, including UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, the European Environment Bureau, NatureFinance, NRDC and New Economics Foundation have launched a Call to Action urging finance stewards to do whatever it takes in their existing mandates to ensure a climate safe and nature-positive economy.

They can achieve this if they treat climate change and biodiversity loss as a twin crisis and activate every available monetary policy and financial regulation instrument, including capital requirements, mandatory transition plans, and climate and nature stress testing, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore biodiversity.

The upcoming 17th G20 Summit on 15–16 November 2022 in Bali is a crucial opportunity for Heads of State and Government Leaders to step up action on tackling climate change and environmental protection. It is crucial to stop investing in companies, sectors and subsectors that are considered “always environmentally harmful” as these represent the highest financial risks. Furthermore, clear and consistent government and central bank intervention is needed to ensure a smooth transition of our financial system towards internationally agreed policy objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in line with the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. The time to act is now!

By Margaret Kuhlow, Global Finance Practice Leader, WWF

Make no mistake, nature is unraveling, and climate and ecosystem breakdown are upon us. WWF’s Living Planet Report 2022 sets out the science. Global wildlife populations have plummeted by 69% on average since 1970, and unless we limit global heating to 1.5°C, climate change is likely to become the dominant cause of nature loss.

This dual emergency threatens not just our prosperity but our survival. As we lose natural diversity and degrade ecosystems, we restrict opportunities to harness nature-based solutions to climate change and other societal challenges. In turn, climate change further drives nature loss and lessens the resilience and productivity of natural systems.

Unprecedented floods, droughts, and storms in Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, and Florida, together with the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report and their increasing focus on climate change, show us what this dual emergency looks like in both humanitarian and economic terms.

In Pakistan, more than 1,700 people dead, 33 million displaced, a third of the country underwater, and around $30 billion in loss and damage, the country’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, described the floods as the “climate catastrophe of the decade.” It’s one that savagely underscores the need to invest in climate adaptation for which current finance to developing countries is 5–10 times below estimated needs.

Adaptation must include investment in nature. Nature-based solutions offer valuable protection against the economic cost of climate change, saving at least $104 billion in 2030 and $393 billion in 2050, as well as contributing to food and water security.

Yet while last month’s World Bank and IMF meetings put the spotlight on slowing growth and increasing poverty as the world fights off multiple shocks alongside the climate crisis, biodiversity finance and nature got little mention.

It’s time to change the story. Taken together, the interrelated crises of climate, nature, poverty, debt, and even inflation, contain a way forward for communities and economies enduring significant challenges. And, although we may not see it clearly yet, they also point to a different pathway for growth and renewal.

We know that economic and financial systems prioritize market- based values of nature such as food and energy production, and ignore services such as climate regulation that lack a market price but are fundamental to our collective well-being. We also know what we need to do to address this and move toward a global economy based on sustainable management of the global commons.

For investors, the climate-nature nexus is increasingly clear. Climate Week in New York saw significant interest in nature-positive investment from private equity and venture capital, for example, and the launch of Taskforce on Nature Markets to develop equitable nature markets that ensure communities benefit from protecting rather than depleting natural resources, is further evidence that the opportunity to harness private finance for nature and climate action is real.

The good news is that opportunities for scaling credible net-zero and nature-positive investment continue to grow. Food systems, for example, are responsible for 70% of global biodiversity loss on land and 50% in freshwater, and around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But, transforming food systems could allow us to feed at least 10 billion people, keep global heating to 1.5°C, and alleviate pressure for further conversion of natural ecosystems for agriculture.

Globally, nature-based solutions could lift a billion people out of poverty, create 80 million jobs, add $2.3 trillion in growth to the global economy, and prevent $3.7 trillion in climate-related damages. Every $1 spent on forest restoration promises to deliver up to $30 in economic benefits, and transitioning to a nature-positive economy could generate annual business opportunities worth $10 trillion and create 395 million jobs by 2030.

Delivering this nature-positive economy requires political vision and leadership.

The potential collapse of ecosystem services such as pollination and timber threatens a $2.7 trillion annual decline in global GDP by 2030, yet governments spend at least $1.8 trillion a year on environmentally harmful subsidies. They should incentivize business models and portfolios that work with nature rather than against it, and close the $4.1 trillion financing gap for nature by 2050.

At COP27, policy makers must mobilize more climate and nature finance; deliver the longstanding $100 billion climate finance pledge; join the 16 countries that have already endorsed the UK’s new 10 Point Plan for financing biodiversity; implement the policy recommendations of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action to reduce nature-related risks; incorporate nature in transition and adaptation plans; double finance for adaptation; and act as cornerstone investors for nature-based solutions that support a just transition, especially for Africa.

In line with the recent independent report to the G20, and calls for the World Bank and Multilateral Development Banks to meet shared global challenges, including through green capital increase, they must also drive wider reform that catalyzes more private finance for emerging and developing economies, and that bridges the gap between voluntary initiatives and supportive policy and regulatory measures.

In Sharm El-Sheikh and Montreal, world leaders must use this time of jeopardy to build for the future and forge a new narrative of hope. Our economies are embedded within nature, and by investing in nature and people, we can tackle climate breakdown and transition to an equitable, net-zero, nature-positive global economy.

Written by Gavin Edwards, Director, Global Nature Positive Initiative, WWF International & Manuel Pulgar Vidal, UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s’ Action Agenda Champion For Nature and People

We are waking up to the profound crisis facing nature. Public concern is growing around the world about the destruction of habitats and the unprecedented rate of species extinction, and how this is undermining the very future of humanity. Biodiversity loss is reaching the boardrooms of leading companies. Governments are beginning to understand the impossibility of halting climate change without protecting nature.

It is vital, therefore, that an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is agreed in Montreal in December, at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Critically, that framework needs to commit the world to becoming nature positive by 2030 and living in harmony with nature by 2050. These goals can become a lodestar we can use to track our progress and assess our actions, just as net zero emissions has become a lodestar for climate mitigation.

One effort cannot succeed without the other. Climate change is one of the key drivers of nature loss. Rising temperatures, extreme weather and the acidification of our oceans are all placing sometimes unbearable stresses on ecosystems and the species that live within them.

Nature, meanwhile, has been our secret ally — effectively regulating the climate system and blunting impacts such as extreme weather which take their toll on our economy and wellbeing. Around 50% of the emissions we produce each year are removed from the atmosphere by oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. Without this sequestration, the average global temperature rise would have far exceeded the 1.1°C we have already seen. However, these sequestration processes have their limits: just as a sodden sponge becomes unable to absorb more water, so the ability of natural systems to absorb ever more carbon will decline if we do not rapidly curb our emissions.

Nature and climate must be addressed simultaneously, while recognizing that they present different kinds.

What we mean when we talk about nature

It is therefore important to define our terms. First, by nature itself, we include not only living organisms, but the ecosystems within which they live. Second, nature positive by 2030 means that, by that date, nature is visibly and measurably on the path of recovery, such that there is more nature than in 2020. Third, living in harmony with nature by 2050 means that our natural systems have fully recovered. Different cultures describe this harmony and the pathway to it in different ways; in China, a framing of ‘Ecological Civilisation’ is embraced, while in Bolivia respecting Pachamama, or Mother Earth, guides their conservation and development.

The first steps on this journey must recognise that progress towards nature recovery cannot take place everywhere, immediately. The needs of poorer countries to equitably develop will inevitably lead to some unwelcome impacts on nature in the decades to come.

Therefore any development which impacts nature must be subject to strict principles and safeguards. Intact habitats and key biodiversity areas must be off limits to intensive development. Economic development must be subject to the mitigation hierarchy, with alternatives sought first, and impacts avoided or minimised as much as absolutely possible. In recognition of the remaining unavoidable impacts, it is vital that restoration or ecological enhancements of habitats become a high priority for governments, in particular for those countries that have lost so much nature already. It should be recognised that the uniqueness of individual ecosystems makes applying the concept of offsetting very challenging for nature so the safeguards noted here are essential for nature to shift to recovery.

Measuring the unique

Measuring how nature loss is declining or being reversed is also a significant challenge. We have more data than ever regarding the populations and health of species, changes in ecosystems and their functionality, and the natural processes that affect them such as extreme flooding in rivers and acidified oceans. Yet we only have a broad sense of how healthy or not the planet is.

For example, analysis of 32,000 wildlife species in the recently published Living Planet Report found a 69% decline in populations compared with 1970, and the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species grows ever longer. Yet both do not by themselves provide an overall barometer of the health of the biosphere, with important spatial measures such as the change in land use over time also equally important.

Measuring nature loss and recovery is still very much a work in progress, for which a number of organisations have developed a solid framework. It combines assessments of species health, ecosystem integrity and the functioning of natural processes. On species, it considers abundance, such as is captured by WWF’s Living Planet Index, and risk, as per the IUCN Red List. It also points to satellite imagery which can provide an assessment of how ecosystems are changing. For natural processes, the framework takes into account measurements such as carbon storage and riverine nutrient flows. These assessments have yet to be aggregated into a holistic picture of biodiversity health — this must be a priority if we are to track progress in the recovery of nature.

The next challenge is operationalising this measure, and how it might be applied. Nationally, there is limited progress, but we are hopeful that, if the GBF sets a goal of becoming nature positive by 2030, this will spur national governments to begin a more holistic accounting of the health of their national biodiversity

At the actor level, considerable work is underway to understand how to measure nature in recovery. For example, the Science Based Targets Network is planning to produce full guidance next year to help companies ensure their sustainability goals are aligned with the science around nature, and to enable them to contribute to a nature-positive world.

On the road to nature positive

“Contribute” is an important verb here. As is argued in a recent discussion paper from Business For Nature, how businesses can become nature positive is “the subject of debate and confusion”, which risks undermining the concept.

As the paper says, if a business or financial institution contributes more to restoring, regenerating and enhancing nature than to harming it, across their value chains and portfolios, they could theoretically be nature positive. However, businesses tend to operate across multiple systems and value chains, with complex impacts and dependencies, and with shared influence and accountability.

Understanding and addressing these impacts and dependencies will require considerable investment of time and resources and is likely to be a multi-year process. We, in common with many other NGOs working in this area, believe that businesses are unlikely to be in a position for some years to claim that they have become “nature positive” in their own right.

Here, again, there is an analogy with climate change. There is a growing recognition that using a simple accounting measure, and a large proportion of carbon offsets, to claim that a business (or country) is ‘carbon net zero’ is slowing progress towards a 1.5°C trajectory at a time when we need to be accelerating such progress. Instead, companies must decarbonize rapidly and contribute whatever they can to attaining a 1.5°C trajectory.

We think this is the right approach for nature. For business and finance, a focus on making the largest contributions possible to a nature-positive world must be the priority, and action must be swift. This will involve a process of assessing impacts and dependencies on nature, committing to targets to address these impacts, transforming business models and value chains, and working to influence system-level change.

That system-level change needs to start at the international level. Given the inter-relationships with climate change, we need to see strong commitments to nature at COP27 in Egypt. And we need to see that momentum carried forward to Montreal at COP15, for an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework. It is time to begin addressing the crisis that the natural world faces, and work rapidly towards a nature-positive world.

In a world of relentless rolling crises, which demand immediate attention and action, it can be difficult to recognise an opportunity to address one of the systemic environmental challenges we face. But, with negotiations on a global biodiversity agreement coming to a head, we have a once-in-a-generation chance to tackle our accelerating nature crisis and start to move towards a nature-positive world.

Make no mistake. There is no shortage of pressing near-term crises that require resolution. War in Ukraine. The resulting global energy crisis. A climate emergency that is becoming ever more severe in its impacts. But a failure to address unprecedented biodiversity loss risks destroying the global life support systems on which we all rely.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has warned that around 1 million of the world’s estimated 8 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction. The rate of species loss is perhaps hundreds of times greater than the average over the last 10 million years. Vertebrate populations have declined in size by an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to WWF.

This is not only a tragedy for the natural world — it also has profound implications for our well-being and, ultimately, for our survival. In purely economic terms, we cannot do without nature. PwC and the World Economic Forum have estimated that more than half of global GDP is generated by industries that are moderately or highly reliant on nature. The natural world provides the global economy with services — food, fibre, energy, water management, etc. — worth an estimated $125 trillion, or 1.5 times global GDP at the time of the study.

Embedded in nature

But, more profoundly, human society is ultimately reliant upon healthy ecosystems. As Professor Partha Dasgupta noted, in a landmark study for the UK government on the economics of biodiversity, humanity is “embedded in Nature”. Our advanced civilisation cannot survive if we degrade or destroy the natural systems that provide humanity’s life support system.

Fortunately, this realisation is beginning to get the attention it needs among policymakers. In December, the UN will hold its much-delayed COP15 summit, in Montreal, Canada, to agree a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This is intended to ensure that humankind can, by 2050, “live in harmony with nature”. Among other things, it aims to ensure that at least 30% of land and ocean is protected, cut pollution and the spread of invasive species, and fundamentally transform the global economy and financial flows to ensure that they protect, rather than harm, nature.

Finance will be key to a successful agreement — both in ensuring that the funding is available to protect nature as well as, crucially, ensuring that existing financing no longer harms it.

There is currently an estimated $700 billion biodiversity finance gap, according to research from the Paulson Institute. In 2019, between $124 billion and $143 billion was spent on protecting nature; the researchers say that adequately protecting biodiversity would require between $722 billion and $967 billion of spending each year.

Closing the gap

Governments are starting to step up to close this gap. At the Glasgow climate talks last November, the Canadian government pledged that it will allocate 20% of its $5.3 billion climate finance commitment to nature-based solutions that support biodiversity. At an earlier round of GBF negotiations, China’s President Xi pledged RMB1.5 billion to a Kunming Biodiversity Fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries.

Multilateral institutions are also responding. In June, sponsor governments agreed the eighth replenishment of the Global Environment Fund (GEF), which acts as the financing mechanism for the CBD, as well as for other international environmental agreements. Biodiversity protection will make up the largest part of GEF funding over its next four-year cycle. The IMF’s recently launched Resilience and Sustainability Trust has been set up to provide lower-income countries with financing to address longer-term threats to their resilience, including environmental challenges; we are hoping for a commitment from the IMF for a conservation component to that trust, essential for preventing pandemics and addressing climate change.

Encouragingly, this week’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York has seen world leaders declare COP15 a priority and announce new biodiversity finance initiatives. The announcement, at a high-level event on the sidelines of UNGA, that Germany is increasing its international biodiversity finance to 1.5 billion euros — the highest total international yearly financial commitment of all OECD countries to biodiversity conservation, so far — sends an important signal that developed countries are prepared to step up. So, too, did the 2021 announcement that the EU is doubling its international biodiversity finance funding, as well as France’s committing 30% of its climate funding to nature, amounting to one billion euros by 2025.

Richer countries have both a responsibility and an interest in helping protect biodiversity in developing countries. These commitments are therefore critical to continuing momentum on nature and helping countries find common ground in the upcoming talks in Montreal.

Here, we can again point to progress achieved this week in New York, with the launch of a 10-point plan for financing biodiversity, endorsed by 16 initial countries from both sides of the negotiations table. And the announcement by the government of Colombia of an accelerator to fast-track action on biodiversity in developing countries as well as an announcement from Costa Rica to support the protection of at least 30% of land and ocean globally.

However, much more needs to be done. But perhaps the greater challenge for governments as they finalise the GBF lies in ensuring that it addresses the impacts that existing public and private financial flows currently have on nature. The main problem they face is that nature is not considered material in the investment decisions made within most of the economy, and that it is rarely considered in government subsidies or when laws and regulations are drafted.

Spending to protect nature

Governments need to redesign their budgets and their subsidy programmes to ensure that their spending protects rather than harms nature. At the same time, they need to ensure that the positive impacts of that spending — such as on poverty alleviation or food security — are maintained.

The private sector, meanwhile, needs to better understand the impact that its financing has on biodiversity, and the extent to which the assets that it finances depend upon natural systems. They can learn from the multilateral development banks, which pledged at COP26 last year “to better understand the financial and systemic risk of nature loss to our public and private portfolios and the current impacts of our portfolios on nature”. The proper pricing of those impacts and dependencies — encouraged, if need be, by financial regulators — would shift capital towards a more nature-positive global economy.

Governments must seize the opportunity presented by the Montreal talks to ensure that the GBF catalyses the financing needed to support conservation efforts and biodiversity protection. But they must also ensure the GBF calls for the alignment, promised in its first draft, of financial flows with a nature-positive global economy. And, of course, governments must ensure that their finance ministries deliver that alignment; they would do well to consult the recent report on the subject from the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.

We do not underestimate the challenge we face in shifting to a nature-positive global economy, especially in the face of manifold existing crises. But what is clear is that if governments fail to craft an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework, and to implement the policies and measures needed to deliver its goals, the costs will be incalculable.

Lin Li — WWF International, Director, Global Policy & Advocacy

Nature is in crisis, putting people and the future of our planet as we know it at risk. Science tells us that one million species are now threatened with extinction. We need action, urgently. But international meetings have been postponed and progress has been slow. Now, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15 has been confirmed to take place 5–17 December in Montreal, Canada, relocated from Kunming, with China retaining the presidency. This decision is welcome as it provides much-needed certainty and a timeline for securing an ambitious global plan to address nature loss.

We are at a critical juncture for nature. The time is now to seize the moment and secure a ‘Paris’-style agreement to reverse biodiversity loss before it’s too late. The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, due to be adopted this year at COP15, presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to secure an ambitious and transformative global plan to reverse nature loss, in support of climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Country negotiators were able to meet in person in Geneva in March, after a two-year delay due to the covid-19 pandemic. That was the third round of negotiations and the time and engagement spent in the process is laudable. Yet with a lengthy schedule and lack of agreement from countries, the pace of negotiations was pedestrian and it resulted in another, fourth and hopefully final meeting being scheduled in Nairobi, Kenya, ahead of COP15 itself.

Starting Tuesday, government negotiators have gathered in Nairobi for the fourth round of negotiations, with an unexpectedly high number of party negotiators and non-state actors participating. These talks are crucial to ensuring we go into COP15 with a strong and relatively clean draft text for the final plan for nature. So far, we have seen mixed progress, with countries urgently needing to find common ground in the coming days to increase ambition.

Unless the draft plan contains all the necessary elements needed to reverse the loss of nature by 2030 for a nature-positive world, we could face a flop in Montreal, or the adoption of a weak agreement that does not tackle our accelerating nature crisis. Neither is an option, for people or for the planet, and so it remains of utmost importance that we work together in the time left this week to ensure a comprehensive, science-based agreement arrives at COP15 for adoption.

How to secure a successful roadmap for nature

A successful plan for nature will deliver immediate action on the ground and the transformative change that is needed to secure a nature-positive world by 2030, meaning that we end this decade with more nature, not less.

A global goal of reversing biodiversity loss to be ‘Nature Positive by 2030’ is essential to drive action across society. It would unite countries behind one shared mission, similar to the 1.5C goal adopted by the Paris Agreement on climate change, and guide all elements of the framework towards an outcome that benefits people and nature.

WWF, alongside other environmental groups, is calling for countries to embrace this global goal and released a new paper in March detailing how we can track progress towards achieving a nature-positive world by 2030.

It is essential that negotiators in Nairobi bridge the gap between existing political commitments and the draft agreement as it is now.

Progress and set-backs

Importantly, there has been significant support in the negotiations so far for a target of protecting and restoring 30% of land and water by 2030 through a rights-based approach. Strong support for a target on gender equality and the inclusion of the right to a healthy environment is also very positive. These elements must be confirmed in the text as soon as possible to ease the process and leave more time to focus on the remaining unresolved issues.

At the same time, the last round of negotiations in Geneva saw slow progress in several areas. Concerningly, the weak ambition on species looks to have continued in Nairobi, with countries indicating they support a goal of halting species extinction by 2030. This is a lower ambition level that we saw at Aichi.

As such, we are eagerly engaging here in Nairobi and pushing to narrow the gaps and get text agreed as much as possible.

Addressing the drivers of biodiversity loss

We must not forget that human activities are causing nature to decline at unprecedented rates — population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have seen an alarming average drop of 68% since 1970. In the last 50 years, our world has been transformed by an explosion in global consumption and production and infrastructure development. This puts a huge amount of pressure on the natural world around us, leading to impacts like habitat loss, overfishing and climate change to name just three.

The world has awakened to the clear need to address these impacts but we must go much further if we are to reverse this catastrophic loss of nature. Humans have cut down half of all tropical forests since the 1960s, mostly replacing them with monoculture farms and pastures — agricultural activities have had the largest impact on ecosystems. The crises of habitat loss and overexploitation have driven countless species to or near extinction, while climate change is accelerated by, and in turn amplifies, these crises.

A commitment to halve our footprint of production and consumption by 2030, including targets ensuring a just and nature-positive transformation of our broken food systems and of other key economic sectors and businesses, must be integrated into the global plan for nature currently being negotiated. Reflecting on the way we produce and consume — including food and agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, fisheries, and finance — is essential if we are to protect nature, food security and nutrition, human health and our economies. This is a priority for WWF in Nairobi.

Leadership and action is essential

Current events, not least a global pandemic, a war in Europe, and continuing political uncertainty in many countries, mean it is not easy for countries to come together and agree on one clear way forward for our planet. Despite the challenges, convergence is needed to ensure the adoption of a strong biodiversity agreement in Montreal.

An ambitious agreement, if backed up by a strong implementation mechanism with a regular cycle of check-backs, reviews and ratcheting up implementation efforts, alongside sufficient financing to reverse biodiversity loss, can help guide countries’ own national action plans that put nature and people at the heart.

Finance that is detrimental to nature is one of the most obvious areas that is damaging our natural world, yet one where there appears the least consensus. Our world is on fire, and we are pouring oil on the fire in the form of finance that is harmful to biodiversity. We drastically need to change course.

Financing nature has three parts — reducing and redirecting incentives that are harmful to nature, repurposing and realigning actions and investments that are harmful to those that are positive for nature, and increasing nature-positive financing and investments. Developing countries should be supported with adequate financial resources to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework. We have only one home. We need leadership from all parties on all those three dimensions, domestically and globally, taking consideration of their capacity and specific situations.

Leadership is the only way to overcome these challenges on the path to a future where we live in harmony with nature. Countries must step up to this challenge and use the remaining time in Nairobi as an opportunity to pave the way to a sustainable future for all.

Civil society, and every one of us, must hold governments accountable to the promises they’ve made, and help bring the final plan to life. The whole of governments and the whole of society need to hit the ground running with a plan that is ready to put into practice as soon as it is accepted. Already two years have gone by in the decade of action for nature, there is no more time to lose!

That nature is in dire crisis is clear. Any number of metrics are tracking the decline of species, of biological diversity, of habitat loss and ecosystem degradation. The evidence has never been greater. Not only of the impact we are having on the planet, but also of the consequences this is having on us, our lives, our economy, our society, our health.

We are beginning to understand that we can’t continue to dominate the natural world, take nature for granted, exploit its resources wastefully and unsustainably…without consequences. Today we know that there are consequences. Some of them are already here: loss of lives and economic assets to extreme weather, aggravated poverty from droughts, zoonotic pandemics able to bring the whole world to its knees.

Nature loss is not only perceived as a moral or an ecological issue, but also as an economic, a development, a human health issue. It is also a justice issue, as the most vulnerable populations are affected the most, and an inter-generational justice issue, as we are leaving a terribly complicated legacy to our children, their children and future generations to come. This is the new moral argument for halting nature loss and climate change.

The global economy is “embedded in nature”, as the UK government’s Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity argued. Around half of global GDP is generated by sectors that directly depend on nature, and 1.2 billion jobs are in sectors depending on healthy nature according to a report we jointly published with the International Labor Organization. Nature provides services — such as the provision of food and fibers, regulation of water and its quality, fish from the ocean and rivers, pollination, and control of pests and disease — worth an estimated $125 trillion to the global economy each year. Not to mention the inspiration, happiness and serenity nature is able to inject in us.

Nature is of existential value to us. Any prospects of a prosperous, equitable and sustainable future depends upon healthy and productive nature. Many of humanity’s challenges captured by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, from poverty to anger, malnutrition and health, will simply be unattainable if we continue to degrade natural systems; poorer communities, particularly in rural areas, depend heavily upon natural resources for their livelihoods.

What is still underappreciated is how important nature is in the fight against climate change. The world’s oceans, forests, wetlands and soils are critical carbon sinks, absorbing half of global carbon emissions. Enhancing those sinks could deliver around one third of the cost-effective carbon mitigation we need by 2030. Indeed, the continuing degradation of nature puts our climate change goals at risk: the climate models on which future emissions trajectories are based assume that natural systems will continue to absorb carbon much as they have in the past. If our continuing degradation of nature means those assumptions no longer hold true, the world will warm faster than we are currently expecting.

It is time for the international community to agree on a clear global goal and plan to halt and reverse nature loss. This June, negotiations are set to continue in Nairobi on a Global Biodiversity Framework which can ensure a nature-positive world by 2030. That means a world that by the end of this decade has more nature than at the beginning: more forests, more fish in oceans and rivers, more pollinators in our farmlands, more biodiversity overall. Such a framework, under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, could mirror the Paris Agreement for climate.

The Paris Agreement on climate change is remembered for the adoption of a clear, easily understood headline goal: to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels. That temperature rise, which can be implied from the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, has provided a benchmark against which policy measures and practical efforts can be measured. Critically, it has provided a rallying call to galvanize action.

If it is true that the impacts on nature are more complex to measure, it is also true that a land-use metric is probably what could better drive and measure a nature-positive goal. Seventeen organizations have recently called on political leaders to incorporate in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework a mission of reversing biodiversity loss and achieving a nature-positive world by 2030. This mission would be assessed against metrics such as the number and populations of species, the extent and integrity of natural habitats, and the health of natural processes, such as river flows.

We believe that a clear commitment to a nature-positive world within the Global Biodiversity Framework will represent the guiding light, the shared goal behind which governments, civil society and the private sector could rally. Corporate leaders, in particular, are calling for clearer measures to help them reduce their impacts on nature, such as those being developed by the Science Based Targets Network. The finance sector, too, is increasingly concerned about the risk of affecting the health of natural systems. Major investors are helping to draft reporting guidance from the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, while central bankers have acknowledged the need to address risks posed by biodiversity loss. All need targets against which progress can be assessed.

We are encouraged to see that references to a nature-positive goal have been suggested in the mission of the latest draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework. It is vital that this is embraced by governments, made clearer and more explicit and, indeed, survives subsequent rounds of negotiation to appear in the final text, which is expected to be agreed in Kunming, China, later this year. Countries whose Head of State and Government has endorsed the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature can and must be champions in this process.

Working towards a nature-positive world by 2030 would give us a measurable mission, a clearly delineated goal against which everyone’s efforts could be judged. It is vital that we begin to reverse nature loss and protect the systems on which we all rely. Nature positive by 2030 must become our clarion call.