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Institute
The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and Paris Agreement (PA) are highly complementary agreements where each depends on the other’s success to be effective. The GBF offers a very specific framework of interim goals and targets that break down the objective of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) into a decade-spanning work plan. Comprised of 10 sections – including a 2050 vision and a 2030 mission, four overarching goals and 23 specific targets – the GBF is expected to guide biodiversity policy around the world in the coming years to decades. A similar set of global interim climate policy targets could translate the global temperature goal into concrete policy milestones that would provide policy makers and civil society with reference points for policy making and efforts to hold governments accountable. Beyond inspiring climate policy experts to convert temperature goals into policy milestones, GBF has the potential to strengthen the implementation of the PA at the nexus of biodiversity and climate (adaptation and mitigation) action. For example, the GBF can help to ensure that nature-based climate solutions are implemented with full consideration of biodiversity concerns, of the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and with fair and transparent benefit sharing arrangements. In sum, the GBF should be mandatory reading for all climate policy makers.
COP 25
(2020)
The 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) became the longest COP on record - but yielded few results. It appears that four years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, enthusiasm has waned and political bargaining and bean-counting have taken over. Countries, for even the slightest chance to keep temperatures 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius, must do much more than they have previously committed to and accelerate the shift towards a zero-carbon economy. However, the conference largely failed to heed the rallying cry of the Chilean presidency. The flagship decisions (grouped under the banner "Chile-Madrid Time for Action") neither produced new commitments - enhancing ambition or finance for developing countries - nor new rules that would nudge countries closer to the climate action targets needed. The leftover pieces from last year's negotiations of the "Paris Rulebook" were also not resolved, in particular the unfinished decisions on Article 6 on market- and non-market mechanisms. The procrastination shows that the new architecture of the Paris Agreement, while addressing several of the shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, suffers from its own weaknesses. The meager results of Madrid give reason to pause and reflect on the conditions that may hold countries back from fully embracing the Paris Agreement, but also to consider the future and nature of carbon markets and what is making the issue so difficult to resolve.