034 - Integrated solutions to the climate change and biodiversity crises

034 - Integrated solutions to the climate change and biodiversity crises

Latest version in this language: Version adopted by the Plenary | Published on: 16 Sep 2021

WELCOMING the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, as well as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that document: (i) the role of climate change as a direct driver of biodiversity loss that also exacerbates other existing pressures on biodiversity, (ii) the role of ecosystem loss and degradation as a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and driver of climate change and reduced resilience, (iii) the need to prioritise the protection and restoration of ecosystems as an essential mitigation and adaptation action, and (iv) the irreplaceability in relevant time frames (2030–2050) of primary ecosystems for addressing the climate change and biodiversity crisis;

WELCOMING the growing recognition of the critical contribution of healthy ecosystems in providing effective nature-based solutions to climate change;

ALSO WELCOMING the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decision 1/CP.25 (para 15) which underlines the essential contribution of nature to addressing climate change and its impacts and the need to address biodiversity loss and climate change in an integrated manner;

RECOGNISING the definition and framework of Nature-based Solutions adopted at the World Conservation Congress 2016, in Hawai‘i, through Resolution 6.069 Defining Nature-based Solutions;

STRESSING the importance of appropriately implementing these Nature-based Solutions, with the appropriate environmental and social safeguards and any recognised rights of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC), including, as appropriate, rights set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in order to maximise benefits for both biodiversity and human well-being, enhance the integrity, stability and adaptive capacity of ecosystems, and avoid adverse outcomes;

RECALLING Resolution 5.097 Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which calls for ensuring that the principles of UNDRIP are observed in the work of the Union;

NOTING the important functional role of biodiversity in underpinning ecosystem integrity, stability and adaptive capacity and the importance of protecting and restoring ecosystem condition as a matter of urgency to address both the biodiversity and climate crises and improve the outlook for sustainable development;

RECALLING that IUCN Members have adopted several Resolutions expressly referring to the role of ecosystem-based approaches in delivering climate change mitigation and adaptation;

RECALLING in particular Resolutions 5.086 Integrating protected areas into climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies (Jeju, 2012) and 4.076 Biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation in national policies and strategies (Barcelona, 2008);

FURTHER RECALLING the objectives of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets;

ALSO RECALLING that CBD Technical Series numbers 41 Forest resilience, biodiversity, and climate change and 43 Connecting biodiversity and climate change mitigation and adaptation noted the feedbacks and interconnections between biodiversity, ecosystem integrity and climate change;

NOTING the significance of climate change to marine biodiversity and ocean acidification, and mindful of the ongoing discussions on an international legally-binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdictions;

ACKNOWLEDGING the work of IUCN Members in advancing Nature-based Solutions to climate change;

RECOGNISING the work of the Climate Change Task Force in furthering IUCN’s ambitions on the climate and biodiversity crisis;

ALSO RECOGNISING the role of science and indigenous and traditional knowledge in understanding the links between climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, as well as in informing climate change and biodiversity strategies, public policies and actions;

STRESSING the importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, the UN Decades on Ecosystem Restoration and on Ocean Science 2021–2030 and the UN Strategic Plan on Forests 2017-2030 for the implementation of the IUCN Programme 2021–2024;

DEEPLY CONCERNED about the findings of the IPCC and IPBES Reports mentioned above and their projected impacts on biodiversity and human well-being;

RECOGNISING their scientific conclusions, including that in model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050. For limiting global warming to below 2°C CO2 emissions are projected to decline by about 25% by 2030 in most pathways and reach net zero around 2070; and

WELCOMING the inclusion of climate change as a prioritised programme area in the proposed IUCN Programme 2021–2024;

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, at its session in Marseille, France:

1. REQUESTS as a matter of urgency, the Director General and Commissions, in line with the IUCN Programme 2021–2024, to:

a. intensify efforts to pursue, monitor and adaptively review integrated approaches to solving the biodiversity and climate crises;

b. ensure that enhanced climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives promote biodiversity conservation, sustainable management, and the sustained protection of ecosystem integrity and promote improved synergies between climate and biodiversity initiatives;

c. prioritise the urgent protection/conservation, sustainable management and restoration of carbon-dense ecosystems while considering the benefit of sequestered carbon in long-lived products of those ecosystems;

d. focus restoration action on regeneration and rehabilitation of natural ecosystems, especially those with high biodiversity value and carbon intensity value, and buffering and reconnecting primary ecosystems;

e. support indigenous peoples and local communities to conserve natural ecosystems, in order to maintain their heritage and livelihoods; and

f. emphasise conservation of threatened, endemic and evolutionary and functionally distinct species;

2. ENCOURAGES Council and all relevant components of the IUCN, avoiding any duplication of work, to:

a. create a comprehensive and integrated climate change and biodiversity policy framework to help guide and coordinate work in these areas across all IUCN components that is coherent with the findings of the UNFCCC and the CBD and commensurate with the urgency and scale of the climate and biodiversity crises, in order to represent an accelerated and ambitious IUCN response;

b. in cooperation with the other relevant organisations, take the initiative to contribute to ‘learning platforms’ to share latest knowledge on climate change and biodiversity, in coordination, and avoiding duplication, with other similar platforms;

c. to propose options to develop a global partnership on climate change and biodiversity conservation to mobilise IUCN’s membership and youth towards greater ambition and action; and

d. call on the Members of IUCN and the experts to urge their governments at all levels and their private sector organisations to speed up an equitable transition to sustainable energy mix, to phase out their dependence on fossil fuels, and to end their subsidies for fossil fuels;

3. CALLS ON Commissions, Members and partners to:

a. recognise that the world community faces global climate and biodiversity crises that are inexorably interlinked, both in their causes and solutions;

b. be informed in their work by IUCN’s integrated climate change and biodiversity policy framework, with the aim of implementing it effectively; and

c. take ambitious action to combat climate change and biodiversity loss and, appropriate to their mandate, support IUCN’s climate and biodiversity work;

4. INVITES governments and donors to support research on the interactions between climate and biodiversity, particularly on the necessary synergies and possible trade-offs, in order to propose appropriate responses to enhance ecological ambition;

5. ALSO STRONGLY ENCOURAGES governments to, as appropriate:

a. reinforce synergies between UNFCCC, CBD, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat and other relevant conventions, as well as between the IPCC and IPBES;

b. support the deployment of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) that promote biodiversity conservation while contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation, appropriately involving the actors concerned at the relevant scales, and that deliver significant multiple benefits for climate mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity and people, thereby contributing to the achievement of various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and

c. raise the ambition of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and integrate NbS into the implementation of their NDCs, National Adaptation Plans and long-term strategies, as well as other national, local and sectoral plans; and

6. ENCOURAGES IUCN Members and other states, government agencies, and non-state actors to promote the implementation of commitments within the climate and biodiversity action agendas in a transparent and accountable manner, using appropriate indicators for monitoring the efforts.

This motion has been proposed in recognition of the existential threat that climate change and the biodiversity crisis poses to the survival of future generations, arising from the failure to successfully develop and implement sufficiently ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change to date.
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With life on Earth facing two existential crises – climate and biodiversity – both of which result from human pressure on the natural world, we have only a small window left in which to act to solve them.

Each crisis is currently making the other worse. Every time we clear or log a primary forest, drain a wetland, dry out a peatland, bleach a coral reef or dam a wild river, we make climate change worse. Carbon once safely stored in those ecosystems is released; and once damaged natural ecosystems are more vulnerable to further loss and damage from drought, fire and climate change - increasing the release of carbon to the atmosphere and making the future for biodiversity on which our lives depend ever more tenuous.

Biodiversity underpins ecosystem integrity and stability and thus makes a vital contribution to long-term carbon storage by reducing the risk of carbon loss to the atmosphere. Protecting and restoring biodiversity and ecosystem integrity is thus a fundamental building block for successful climate action.

Preventing further damage and improving the integrity of all ecosystems is urgent. We can and must draw a line under the downwards spiral we are on. Unless we act to solve both crises together we will likely fail on both.

There is now a global conversation about the role of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) to the climate crisis lead by the UN Secretary General. However, if nature is to provide about 30% of the climate solution we must ensure that nature based climate action does 4 things: reduces emissions in relevant time frames (2030 and 2050); protects biodiversity and ensures ecosystem integrity; supports the rights and livelihoods of indigenous communities; and does no harm.

Primary, natural ecosystems are irreplaceable for their biodiversity and carbon storage value. Improving their integrity, stability and resilience is critically important. IUCN has a unique and important role to play in policy, education, communication and practice.

Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all forests on earth, contribute up to five percent of the global annual CO2 emissions and take decades to centuries to recover lost carbon; primary forests store 30-70% more carbon than wood production forests; trees sequester more carbon later in life than when young; and old trees keep sequestering carbon until they die.

Monocultures do little for biodiversity or climate mitigation and are at much higher risk of loss and damage from pests, disease, drought, fire and climate change. Planting trees only to cut them down 10 – 30 years later will do little to help meet desperately needed emissions reduction by 2030 and 2050.

Restoring degraded natural ecosystems offers superior climate and biodiversity outcomes. Research demonstrates the huge sequestration potential from restoring mangroves and peatlands. New research demonstrates that allowing secondary natural forests to reach their biological potential would provide far greater and timely benefits than planting new trees.

We must do everything we can to encourage governments to integrate climate and biodiversity action and ensure indigenous and local communities are supported to help protect and restore them. Doing so is the best and only way to protect the climate, biodiversity and ecosystem integrity right now.
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This motion calls for strengthening the links between actions to fight climate change (mitigation and adaptation) and to combat biodiversity loss and land degradation, including with the support of Nature-based Solutions (NBS). This joint approach aims to achieve ambitious objectives on different environmental aspects of the same global ecological crisis.

As living beings are key in climate regulation and impacted by its changes, the scientific connection "climate-biodiversity" is on the agenda of the academic sphere. This is demonstrated by the adoption at the 7th plenary session of the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) of a decision for a future technical document on climate-biodiversity linkages, the special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Climate Change and the Oceans (SROCC) [adopted in September 2019] and the meeting between IPCC and IPBES experts held in 2018 in Paris. In addition, their respective reports on the links between climate, desertification, land degradation (IPCC, August 2019), and between biodiversity and land degradation and restoration (IPBES, March 2018) recall and confirm that sustainable land management and restoration is a major link with and between climate and biodiversity. Strengthening these links is essential to influence synergies and trade-offs between these two major challenges and the three Rio conventions when deploying concrete solutions based on sound scientific knowledge.

As for the UN conventions, the development of the climate action agenda and the biodiversity agenda under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the work of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) testify to this favourable dynamic. It is also the vision that underlies the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Agenda, which link climate, biodiversity and development issues within a transversal and coherent framework. This motion calls for an upward revision of contributions determined at national level under the Paris Agreement (NDC), with a greater emphasis on NBS. It is also part of a longer-term perspective through the cycle of ambition of the Paris Agreement, which concerns both the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change.

The main objective of the motion is to increase commitments on both fights against climate change and biodiversity loss, highlighting the synergies (and being aware of possible trade-offs). Thus, governments, their agencies and non-state actors are invited to integrate biodiversity in their climate policies and activities, and vice versa (integrating climate change in biodiversity activities). The motion gives importance to the development of nature-based solutions, and to strenghtening synergies between the Rio conventions, as well as between the IPCC and IPBES.

This motion is a unique opportunity for States, international conventions, researchers and other non-state actors to work together to develop solutions that will allow the international community to continuously enhance its ambition to achieve its climate and biodiversity objectives.
  • IUCN Council
  • Australian Conservation Foundation [Australia]
  • Australian Marine Conservation Society [Australia]
  • Australian Rainforest Conservation Society [Australia]
  • Benin Environment and Education Society [Benin]
  • Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit und Verbraucherschutz [Germany]
  • Conservation International [United States of America]
  • Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH [Germany]
  • Ecological Society of the Philippines [Philippines]
  • Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand [New Zealand]
  • Groupe de Recherche et d'Action pour le Bien-Être au Bénin [Benin]
  • Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères [France]
  • Ministère des Relations Extérieures et de la Coopération de Monaco [Monaco]
  • Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico [Spain]
  • The WILD Foundation [United States of America]
  • Wetlands International [The Netherlands]

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