In a critical year for climate change and environmental diplomacy, the outlook for international cooperation towards sustainability is still uncertain. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the timeline for global events in 2021. Moreover, given that global problems – from ocean conservation to wildlife extinction, and from tax havens to debt relief – require global solutions, the pandemic has illustrated vividly how international cooperation, action and ambition can be stymied by competition, suspicion, and protectionism, and how costly the results of these failures can be. It is evident that when individual nations hoard crucial medical supplies, decline to share public health information internationally, or fail to adopt effective measures on cross-border travel and quarantine, global efforts to exit the pandemic – or, at least, to better manage its consequences – are harmed.
From tensions between China and the US, to the reshaping of global supply chains, COVID-19 may prove to be one of a number of turning points for globalization and the changing map of global power.
While the election of a US president with a greater commitment to multilateralism is an encouraging signal, the geopolitical competition that has accompanied today’s changing balance and geographical distribution of economic power, from West to East, presents a challenge to post-war international rules and institutions. While the pandemic is not the cause of this competition, it has acted as an accelerant. From tensions between China and the US, to the reshaping of global supply chains, COVID-19 may prove to be one of a number of turning points for globalization and the changing map of global power. Fragmentation and dynamic disequilibrium across multiple, globalized systems means that stresses and shocks risk cascading negative effects. The pandemic is just one example: climate change in one region, for instance, may cause water scarcity and affect agricultural production, causing food insecurity in another region, thereby bringing about social and political instability.
However, just as failure to act within one system can obstruct action within others, creating vicious cycles, positive interplays can also be created by coordinating multiple levers for change between systems, thereby generating a virtuous cycle of positive effects, in which action towards a policy goal strengthens the likely achievement of other goals, rather than creating trade-offs. Yet achieving this – and realizing a green recovery and a ‘super year’ for the environment in 2021, with positive outcomes across a number of environmental negotiations, notably including the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) in Kunming, China, and the 26th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP26) in Glasgow, UK – will mean that the UN, multilateral organizations and governments will need to exercise greater leadership and realize far more effective global coordination across sectors. As tempting as it might be to downplay the significance of multilateral or multi-sectoral approaches – in favour of unilateralism, ‘silver bullet’ approaches or transformative social change, to the exclusion of coordinated global efforts – the further fragmentation of the world order threatens peace and sustainability, and leadership in multilateral forums is a necessary dimension of achieving sustainability in 2021.
The purpose of this short briefing paper is to present a dynamic timeline that will help policymakers, campaigners, planners and diplomats to understand the complexities at play in environmental policy, and to coordinate across ‘silos’ with maximum effectiveness, paying attention to the particular sequence of events and narratives that may emerge, in order to maximize the ‘super year’ potential of 2021. To create virtuous cycles that protect nature, climate and health, policymakers must build a green recovery through the COPs of the three UN-led Rio Conventions, as well as the G20 and G7 summits, and the many other multilateral summits, report launches and political events scheduled – and yet to be scheduled – to convene this year, as detailed in the timeline. As the latter will attempt to highlight, this process will require not only agility and the capability to respond iteratively to feedback, but also attention to an overall narrative ‘arc of engagement’, in which linkages between processes bind together and intensify the coordination required for a resilient and green recovery that links cross-cutting themes in protecting nature, climate and health.
Putting such emphasis on narrative momentum does not imply idealism: taking the necessary action, of course, requires more than visions and ideals at any specific level. Progress will need to be fought for, harnessed and enforced at multiple levels: by citizens’ movements and social mobilization; by governments, policymakers and political parties; by diplomats and actors in international institutions. The underlying political economy, geopolitics and technological regimes are just some of the fundamental conditions that will shape the deployment of any such visions. Focusing attention on the timeline, however, helps to highlight the strategic visions and entry points that exist – at the UN, in other multilateral forums, in and between economic and regional blocs, among nation states, and among actors in global value chains – all of which may contribute to expanding opportunities for productive cooperation on sustainability in this critical year.
Key processes and events scheduled for 2021 include: the roll-outs of the European Green Deal (EGD) and China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, covering 2021–25; the major conferences of the three UN-led Rio Conventions (the UNFCCC COP26 and the COP15s of the CBD and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification), and other multilateral meetings, such as the G20 and G7, the UN Food Systems Summit, and several report launches by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Throughout the year, there will be concerted efforts to achieve a green economic recovery that avoids ‘locking in’ an environmentally destructive rebound, or deepening inequality; the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, as well as US President Biden’s Earth Day Summit may play a role here. Furthermore, additional benefits in terms of a synergetic, virtuous cycle approach might be gained from linkages in the policy and technical concepts that should be applied in implementing these visions, such as the models of the circular economy and of nature-based solutions (NBS). The virtuous cycle is presented here as both the medium and the message: the term suggests both a mechanism for building positive engagement, and a model for a better systemic outcome that values nature, climate, health and equity.
The below timeline should help governments and institutions to visualize how the COVID-19 recovery in 2021 may prove a critical moment for the renewal of dynamic coordination, international cooperation and holistic thinking around building healthy, low-carbon development models. In 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Environment published its proposals for coordination between the three Rio Conventions, the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, as the ‘Egyptian Initiative for a coherent approach for addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, and land and ecosystem degradation’. The document calls for a ‘virtuous cycle […] wherein urgent and deep emission reductions allow for climate change to be limited to 1.5 degrees […reducing] impacts on biodiversity allowing it to improve resilience of ecosystems, which in turn would improve mitigation of climate change.’ The initiative proposes that countries target actions such as reducing deforestation, restoring degraded ecosystems and promoting the sustainable management of croplands and pastures.
As well as co-hosting COP26 in 2021, the UK and Italy will also host, respectively, the G7 and G20 summit meetings. Since the host countries can play a role in setting the meeting agendas, both summits can serve as opportunities for leaders and finance ministers to emphasize the virtuous cycle approach to protecting climate and biodiversity during the post-virus economic recovery and beyond, and to advocate the particular importance of NBS.
The G20 is of particular significance: it represents the world’s largest economies and carbon emitters, including China, which will host the CBD COP in 2021, and the G20 Rome summit can be expected to focus on the global recovery from COVID-19. A proposal by F20 Foundations, Campaign for Nature and SEE Foundation has set out how NBS could become central for the G20: by reaffirming ‘the principle […] that the conservation of the most carbon-dense and biodiversity-rich natural ecosystems is a key priority for a raising climate change ambition in the UNFCCC framework, establishing a strong Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework under the CBD, and reducing risks of future zoonotic pandemics’; by standing ‘above the negotiating “silos” of the UNFCCC and CBD’ and sending ‘a strong political message for cooperation […] and [the] scaling of NBS’; and by committing ‘to a green […] economic recovery’ from COVID-19.
