This paper has presented an explanatory timeline and supplementary materials that are intended to help governments, institutions, campaigners, diplomats and others to visualize how the COVID-19 recovery in 2021 might help to renew dynamic coordination, international cooperation and holistic thinking around building healthy, low-carbon development models.
Coordination across the three Rio Conventions and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will be difficult to achieve, and it is possible that such an agenda will be overwhelmed by the continuing fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resultant international tensions, and efforts to secure an economic recovery. However, opportunities exist for leaders to emphasize the virtuous cycle approach to protecting climate, nature and health in the post-virus economic recovery (and beyond), and to build greater international cooperation and resilience in the process. Some of these concrete recommendations might include:
For the UN:
- Use the ‘super year’ potential of the three Rio Conventions summit meetings envisaged for 2021 (culminating in UNFCCC COP26, scheduled for November, and rounded off by the 50th anniversary in 2022 of the groundbreaking Stockholm Conference) to create virtuous cycles between climate, biodiversity and land use, as proposed in the Egyptian initiative;
- Establish formal coordination mechanisms between pledges under the UNFCCC and UN CBD, the NDCs and NBSAPS, respectively, to create synergies around land use and NBS, and avoid trade-offs, as promoted in the China and New Zealand NBS manifesto;
- Utilize the UN Strategic Planning Network to better coordinate across silos and create linkages between nature, climate and health.
For other multilateral bodies:
- Use the G20 and G7 summits to emphasize reforms to financing and bilateral and multilateral trade systems, to support a global circular economy transition; to advocate against any relaxation of environmental regulations in the name of post-virus stimulus and recovery; and to incorporate green conditionalities into any corporate bailouts;
- Call, at the G20 summit, for the inclusion of NBS and biodiversity principles into rules on lending and finance more broadly;
- Make EU–China cooperation, and renewed coordination across the
US–EU–China triangle, under the Biden presidency, a venue for virtuous-cycle approaches to engagement across nature, climate and health; host strategic exchanges on how to stimulate NBS in the post-COVID-19 recovery;
- Ensure development institutions support NBS in low- and middle-income countries in coordination with resilient and inclusive economic recovery packages. Linking NBS to the SDGs can help to address nutrition, health and economic inclusion, and avoid vicious cycles through projects such as afforestation on agricultural land.
For governments:
- Enact ambitious climate NDCs, in line with Paris Agreement objectives, which include NBS and are linked proactively to submissions under the biodiversity convention (NBSAPS), to encourage synergies and avoid trade-offs;
- Include biodiversity, NBS and ocean conservation measures in national climate adaptation plans;
- Draw on the science, as presented by the IPCC’s AR6 reports, to adopt ambitious net zero carbon neutrality pledges for 2050 at the latest;
- Coordinate strategic exchanges on how to stimulate the circular economy in the post-COVID-19 recovery.
