A radical transformation of our economies is the only way to save nature, and ourselves
4 November 2024 - After two weeks of negotiations last week in Cali, Colombia, the meeting was suspended with no overall agreement on a path forward on “resource mobilisation." CISL's Chief Innovation Officer, James Cole, looks back at happened at COP16, and asks what comes next.
The extended talks were suspended after it became apparent there were no longer enough parties involved to take decisions, leaving some of the hardest areas of discussion unresolved, including the establishment of a new biodiversity fund to help poorer nations restore their depleted natural environments, which was blocked by developed countries including the EU, Japan and Canada.
During COP16 there was no argument about the dire state of nature on our planet, our critical reliance on it for our prosperity, resilience and wellbeing; nor the overarching global goal under the GBF agreed two years ago in Montreal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
The progress and path towards that goal, however, neither reflects the urgency nor the seriousness of the crisis we find ourselves in - with only 44 countries having submitted their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs). This is perhaps not surprising given the lack of resources provided to emerging and developing countries to write such strategies.
Nature protection is no longer only about saving endangered species and plant life for its own sake, but about the very future of our societies. We have degraded the natural world such that it may not for much longer be able to sustain us as we live today, nor on our current trajectory.
Our material prosperity has been built on a linear model of extracting natural resources which are consumed, used and disposed at a rate beyond which they can replenish; our food and industrial production and consumption systems drive deforestation and soil degradation; and our seas, forests and soils cannot absorb all the climate changing greenhouse gas emissions we produce. And yet this system is not even successfully meeting basic needs for everyone.
Negotiations in Cali centred on the ($700bn) financing needed to achieve the GBF; ‘resource mobilisation’; the role and rights of indigenous people; and how biodiverse countries share in the financial and other benefits of scientific discoveries made in their countries, amongst other things. However, the meeting was suspended in extra time with agreement only on the role indigenous peoples and communities; and a benefits sharing mechanism on digital sequencing information of genetic resources (DSI) – both groundbreaking in their own right, but not the full solution.
Issues around who pays, who has a say, who benefits and how effort is shared underlie the disagreement – playing into tensions between global north countries perceived to have driven much of the damage through colonial models of industrialisation, and biodiversity-rich countries in the global south who being asked to constrain their economies to conserve nature.
A team of Cambridge-based professionals, academics, researchers and conservationists from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), the Conservation Research Institute, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and many of its charity members – TRAFFIC, BirdLife International and Fauna and Flora International – amongst others, attended the Convention as expert advisors and as observers.
Representatives from business, finance and civil society showed up in force to support the negotiations, willing to be part of the solution, and reflecting the ‘whole of society’ effort that will be needed to turn the tide on nature destruction.
Whilst negotiations under the treaty stalled, there was heart to be taken in the level of engagement, alongside an acknowledgement of our collective failure to truly take to heart the scale and structural nature of the changes needed to our economies and societies.
In terms of the private sector, over 500 companies are now committed to assessing, disclosing and managing their impacts on nature in line with the Taskforce of Nature Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) with many more preparing to submit their 'nature strategy' for public record and scrutiny. Business-led conversations centred on biodiversity restoration projects inside or outside their supply chains, the need for better and more aligned metrics applicable at the level of country and company disclosures, and the uncertain pathway towards company ‘transformation’ to be ‘nature-positive’.
Global banks and asset managers participated in discussions centring on the role of private finance to help plug the estimated $700bn 'nature-finance gap' and the role of the private sector in filling it. There are now over 10 nature-related equity funds, which promise financial and nature benefits. Nation state debt-for-nature swaps were celebrated as mechanisms to solve emerging economy debt problems whilst restoring nature - such as Belize’s 2021 blue bond, which reduced debt by 12% of GDP and unlocked funding for conservation in line with the 30% GBF goal. The multilateral Asian Development Bank (ADB) issued $100m biodiversity and nature bond, and the IFC, part of the World Bank, announced a $50m investment into a Colombian nature bond set up by Banco Davivienda. Overall a drop in the ocean, so to speak, but perhaps a proof of concept?
Despite the disappointing end to these international negotiations, there were signals that national nature laws aligning with the treaty were creating new markets for nature restoration. The EU Nature Restoration Law (which aims to 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030) and the UK's Biodiversity Net Gain Law (where developers must pay for nature improvements to offset site-level impacts) are examples. The latter is a blunt and imperfect instrument, but another step forward in tying nature into our markets and economics.
To activate leadership on sustainability in business, government and finance, we at CISL we have been working with the finance sector members of our Investment Leaders Group and Banking Environment Initiative to reframe nature finance and channel more private capital into nature protection and restoration within the EU Horizon funded project A-track. The report was launched at COP16, with leaders in finance such as Standard Chartered Bank recognising its potential to “mobilise finance to where it's needed to make a material impact towards both halting and reversing nature loss”.
CISL has been working in partnership with the Capitals Coalition and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, with funding from the EU Horizon project, to develop and launch a playbook of nature-positive business model archetypes with potential to restore and protect nature by design. In 2025 we will pilot these models with leading corporates in our network and the nature-positive startups in CISL’s Canopy startup accelerator to test the theory in practice. The three Canopy members and startups participating in COP16 – Earthblox, SPUN and Think-Nature – provided everyone with the feeling solutions are possible.
But at the whole systems-level, despite these signs of enlightened self-interest from progressive businesses and banks, and the efforts of sustainability-led startups, these shifts will not become mainstream nor be able to protect and restore nature at the scale needed unless we collectively redesign our economic systems and markets to do so. Whilst there is profit to be made in liquidating natural capital for shareholder returns, no matter what the long term cost, the short-term market logic will win out.
What we need now is the political will to write a new narrative around human development, and dispel the false dichotomy between social and ecological or economic health. We need to embrace more rounded progress indicators to guide our economies and build new markets. We need to properly integrate and value nature-positive activities and discourage and disincentivise those activities which degrade and impoverish our planet and our societies.
How we achieve this is the new leadership agenda. In less than two weeks another set of international negotiators will meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the COP29 UN-led climate negotiations – and our collective future depends on global agreements commensurate with our global challenges.
To tackle the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises, in fair and just ways, we need all those leaders in governments, business, finance and civil society to look to the future beyond their commitments, targets and pioneering projects within the bounds of today’s economy, to do the hard work to build consensus among countries in the global north and global south, and to build the new economic system we all know is needed, for the future we want.