Next week the city of Cali, Colombia hosts the “COP of the people” as the organizers have dubbed it.
Officially, it is the “United Nations Sixteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 16).” Unofficially, it has been truncated to “Biodiversity COP16”.
Paul Hartman leads the Nature, People and Climate Investment Program (NPC) for the Climate Investment Funds (CIF). This has been, and continues to be, a busy year for the NPC program. CIF recently endorsed $31 million in concessional funding for Rwanda and $30 million for the Dominican Republic to drive forward their national climate programs in biodiversity and nature-based solutions. The program has also been working to flesh out the previously approved Investment plans for Brazil and for Africa’s Zambezi River Basin Region which includes Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Tanzania.
Ahead of Biodiversity COP16 in Cali, Paul Hartman shares his thoughts and insights on nature-based solutions and the interplay between climate, biodiversity, and people.
1. Biodiversity COP in Cali x Climate COP in Baku: Interconnected global endeavors
There are two big UN conferences coming up. The first is the Biodiversity COP in Cali, Colombia, and the second is [the UNFCCC’s] COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.
These are separate events with their own multilateral agreements that come out of them. But the global community increasingly recognizes that they are closely connected – that there is a dual crisis and that the two different agreements need to find common ground and address challenges together.
In practice, this means that that we need integrated solutions. Nature-based solutions are part of that equation to help communities to tackle climate change through carbon sequestration, building land and community resilience, and combating biodiversity loss by protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing natural environments.
2. A Complex Interplay: Climate, Biodiversity, and People
In my travels over the past year, I have encountered multiple examples of the complex interplay between climate change, biodiversity loss, and impacts on people’s lives. I met CIF stakeholders in the Dominican Republic and the day after I left there was 17 inches of rain, which caused severe landslides and killed more than 20 people in the capital. [The pics below is of CIF’s scoping mission in the Dominican Republic.]
In the watershed where our program will focus, the river overflowed, damaging agriculture and fishing, as well as supplies of fresh water. And then in Zambia, there were the worst droughts for 20 years, and again the impacts were significant, with food shortages, freshwater scarcity, and people’s livelihoods under threat.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was in Brasilia in Brazil and a colleague told me they hadn’t seen rain in over 150 days. It was the second year of extreme drought, and it was affecting about 60% of the country, with the Cerrado biome burning and smoke drifting across the city.
What all of these examples show is the interconnectedness between nature, climate change, and biodiversity – impacting on agriculture, forests, and coastal and other systems. The way we manage these systems can either help or hinder us in supporting landscapes, people, and environments. If we manage them badly, then the impacts of climate change will be magnified, but if we manage them well, then healthier ecosystems can create a buffer against extreme weather events and lessen impacts across the board.
The bottom line? Everything we see suggests that our ecosystems are highly interconnected. Climate affects habitats, biodiversity, and the most vulnerable people, so it’s vital to understand that we can't separate these out. Instead, we need to prioritize joined-up solutions.
3. Progress, yes, but we must redouble our efforts
Science shows that even if every country delivered on all their climate commitments, the world would exceed 2˚Celsius above pre-industry levels by 2050. And in reality, we are far away from meeting all those commitments. For biodiversity alone, it’s estimated there is a funding gap of about $700 billion a year. This financing need will be a big focus of the CBD meeting in Cali.
If we want to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, we need to start achieving the goals we have set for ourselves - so there is a lot of work to do. On the flipside, many people I have met around the world know that climate change is a real threat, and they are taking practical steps where they can.
At a global level, we are seeing a push for greater coordination and collaboration. For example, during COP26 in Glasgow, all the multilateral development banks (MDBs), our CIF partners, came together to recognize the importance of nature in tackling the impacts of climate change. The MDBs agreed through a joint statement to mainstream nature through their policies, investments, and operations, which was a really positive move toward greater coordination, with the CIF playing a vital role.
Earlier this year, I visited Rwanda, where the CIF NPC program is helping to scale landscape resilience across two districts. It really showed me how collaboration between CIF and country-led platforms can work in practice. And while there is a long road ahead, I am confident we have taken positive steps toward achieving our goal of addressing the impacts of climate change, promoting biodiversity, and protecting people and livelihoods.
Learn more about our Nature, People, Climate Investment Program. Watch this video: