COP16 Biodiversity, WUF, COP29 Climate and COP16 Desertification: the end-of-year international agenda

October 2024

Association Climate Chance (Climate Chance)

COP16 biodiversity: operationalising the Kunming-Montreal global framework for biodiversity

The sixteenth Conference of the Parties to the CBD will be held from 21 October to 1 November in Cali, Colombia. The priority will be to translate the commitments of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GFB), adopted at COP15 in 2022, into concrete action. This includes helping countries to ensure that their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) are in line with the 23 goals of the GBC, including the 30×30 target: to conserve 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, through the creation of protected areas or other area-based conservation measures.

Among the priorities, highlighted in particular by civil society and research bodies:

• Increasing the level of ambition of commitments and ensuring that they are followed by implementation and, where appropriate, legislation.

• Ensure robust monitoring and accountability systems for WCD targets.

• Integrate biodiversity issues into all sectors, particularly food, energy, human rights and development

• Financing the achievement of the WCD targets (the financing gap is estimated at $700 billion per year)[10], which, as in the case of climate change, appears to be the key factor that will determine the success of implementation. More specifically, urgent issues include aligning financial flows with targets, widening access to finance for nature, particularly in developing countries, and for indigenous peoples and local communities - whether through alternative models such as the bioeconomy, or through new instruments such as biodiversity credits.

As far as the Colombian Presidency of the COP is concerned, the theme chosen for this year’s event is ‘Peace with Nature’, with the country’s Minister for the Environment, Susana Muhamad, stating that the results of this COP could contribute to peace efforts by ‘empowering and mobilising local communities in regions where armed struggle is taking place, in particular to deal with illicit economies’. The statement comes against the backdrop of significant deforestation following the country’s 2016 peace deal with the FARC rebel group, which has led former fighters to turn to unregulated agriculture, alongside other rebel groups that reject the peace deal and continue to fight. According to Global Witness, Colombia has recorded the highest cumulative number of murders of environmental defenders since 2012.

COP29 climate: the ‘financial COP

The most closely followed of the three, the climate COP, taking place this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been dubbed the ‘finance COP’, because countries will have to set a new collective quantified target (NCQG) for climate-related financial flows. These negotiations, which will cover the quantity, form and sources of funding, will help to ease the growing tensions between developed and developing countries over who will pay for emission reductions, adaptation and loss and damage. Negotiations on a number of other issues have previously been stalled by funding problems, and the previous target of $100 billion a year by 2020 was not reached until 2022, according to OECD figures.

While the issue of financing is at the forefront, negotiations will continue on other subjects, as countries prepare the next round of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), specifically NDC 3.0, which must be submitted before COP30 in 2025 and will cover the period up to 2035. These documents will therefore have an important role to play in linking current policies with medium-term policies, and will be informed by the results of the first global stocktaking under the Paris Agreement, which was completed in 2023. Stronger implementation of the NDCs will depend on the monitoring of actions and transparency, a declared priority of the Azerbaijani Presidency. Countries are also expected to submit their first biennial transparency reports by the end of the year.

Among the other priority themes of the current negotiations:

• Mitigation and energy transition, and the follow-up to the COP28 targets of tripling renewable capacity and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030. The transition away from fossil fuels, a hard-won victory much talked about in Dubai, was conspicuous by its absence from the priorities of the Azerbaijani Presidency.

• Negotiations on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which have been ongoing since the last two COPs, will determine how carbon markets and international cooperation on credits can be made operational.

• The operationalisation of the UAE Framework for the Global Adaptation Target, which aims to put adaptation on an equal footing with mitigation.

• Working out the details of financing for loss and damage, following the progress made last year in setting up and operating the Loss and Damage Fund.

COP16 desertification: the largest mobilisation on the subject to date

Following the adoption of the 2018-2030 strategic framework, the establishment of a baseline for land degradation in 2018, followed by data-driven assessments of land loss and restoration for the first time in 2023, the UNCCD continues to work towards its strategic objectives, including improving the condition of affected ecosystems, combating desertification/land degradation, promoting sustainable land management and contributing to land degradation neutrality. The other, relatively less well-known, priorities of the UNCCD in this new framework are improving the living conditions of affected populations, strengthening drought resilience, generating global environmental benefits from the implementation of the Convention and mobilising financial and non-financial resources for implementation.

The previous UNCCD COP, in 2022 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, advanced negotiations between the Parties on drought, gender, sand and dust storms, migration induced by land degradation, and for the first time, land tenure. The 2024 COP, which is expected to be the largest ever organised by the UNCCD signatories, will be hosted by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh and will aim to ‘mobilise governments, businesses and communities worldwide to accelerate action on land restoration and drought resilience as a cornerstone of food, water and energy security’]. It will also be marked by the mid-term review of the implementation of the strategic framework, with the aim of formulating recommendations with a view to the 2030 objectives. One of the priorities of this COP is also to move from voluntary assessments and actions by countries to more harmonised assessments and actions at global level, in order to achieve the COP15 objective of restoring 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030.

The climate-biodiversity-soil convergence: ecosystems at the heart of the action

The ‘One Health’ concept is an iteration of the convergence between the three Rio conventions and their objectives, and the sustainable development objectives, which took on particular importance with the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. In an opinion piece published by the World Economic Forum in September 2024, Astrid Schomaker, Ibrahim Thiaw and Simon Stiell, the respective executive secretaries of the conventions on biodiversity, desertification and climate change, emphasised the interdependence of the objectives of the three conventions. The restoration of ecosystems, agri-food systems and renewable energies were presented as areas for advancing the three agendas, while calling for greater coherence in policies and funding at national and sub-national levels.

Indeed, ecosystems are at the heart of solutions to interrelated crises, and their protection and restoration will contribute to achieving the goals of all three conventions. The IPCC Working Group II report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability states that Nature-based Solutions (NBS) for climate change adaptation will reduce the risks and vulnerabilities of people and nature and contribute to resilience, while remaining feasible and effective.

For example, wetland restoration can protect biodiversity while reducing flood risk, or urban greening can reintroduce green belts into cities while reducing flood risk and heat-related hazards. In this way, the application of SfNs can contribute to the achievement of the global adaptation objective under the Paris Agreement, of objective 8 of the WCD relating to climate resilience, and even of the SDGs. Joint implementation on the ground will contribute to the joint monitoring of indicators under the different conventions.

Similarly, ecological connectivity can also address the priorities of the three Rio Conventions - protecting and conserving areas of biodiversity and the wildlife found there, making them more resilient to climate change, restoring degraded land and even contributing to mitigation through sequestration in the case of larger tracts of forest.

While there are many synergies, there are also trade-offs in the case of certain actions which, while beneficial in one respect, may be detrimental in another (for example, poorly planned large-scale solar or wind farms may affect biodiversity in the region). To avoid these trade-offs, climate, biodiversity and soil actions also need to be planned in an integrated way, right from the funding stage.

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