Box 13. The urgency of now – summary of progress on the three ‘Rio conventions’
The next few years are crucial for setting the tone and ambition for environmental action, and for helping to chart a path towards more sustainable land use. However, with political bandwidth and fiscal capacity still constrained by the after-effects of the pandemic and cost-of-living and resource security concerns, substantial difficulties remain to be overcome.
In the near term, a series of important environmental negotiations and intergovernmental meetings are continuing that will together shape the international sustainability agenda for the coming decades. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and food insecurity are inseparable challenges that must be addressed together. Strategy in all four areas must be reflected in a holistic and integrated set of targets, informed by science, that will drive action towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
2020 was supposed to be the ‘super year’ for the environment, with several pivotal summits set to refocus global commitments on climate change and biodiversity. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of many scheduled international forums, including the major UN conferences of the parties (COPs) to the three ‘Rio conventions’ – on climate change (UNFCCC), desertification (UNCCD) and biodiversity (CBD). With the last of these eventually concluding in late 2022, clarity on the principles that countries are committing to has finally begun to emerge.
Despite the lost time, the necessary rescheduling of these summits offered a couple of benefits. First, there was more opportunity, arguably not fully realized, to forge stronger linkages between the agendas of the three COPs, and to develop a dialogue that builds between each conference to establish shared nature-based solutions. These factors will be crucial if land is to meet the multiple demands on it. Second, perhaps more tangibly, the delays to the Glasgow climate summit (COP26) allowed the US, under the administration of President Joe Biden, to re-engage more fully and reverse its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement that had taken effect in the final weeks of the Donald Trump presidency.
Climate – UNFCCC
The UN-led climate talks, COP26, rescheduled to November 2021, were regarded as a crucial moment for climate diplomacy, marking the first milestone since the COP21 Paris Agreement in 2015 committed countries to ‘ratcheting up’ their climate pledges – nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – every five years. On this front, governments fell short: although over 120 parties submitted new or updated NDCs, the new targets only narrow the gap to 1.5°C by 15–17 per cent and are, if fully implemented (and even this is far from certain), projected to result in warming of 2.4°C by the end of the century. If humanity is to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, additional greenhouse gas emissions reductions over and above these NDC pledges will be needed before 2030. The required size of these additional cuts equates to reducing emissions by the equivalent of two years of current annual global emissions. To limit warming to 2°C, the equivalent reductions needed would equate to one year’s total emissions.
The Glasgow Climate Pact – the main political outcome of COP26 – asked governments to revisit and strengthen their NDCs by the following COP to bring these in line with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal and to develop, also before the end of 2022, long-term strategies to transition to net zero emissions. Only 34 of 194 parties revised their NDCs in the timeframe, although this did include major economies such as Australia, Indonesia and Mexico, and only 11 long-term strategies were submitted, bringing the total to 54. This resulted in the outcome document from COP27, hosted by Egypt, having to reiterate the previous requests to countries that had not acted on their NDCs or strategies to do so by COP28 in the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023.
COP26 did secure a couple of significant plurilateral commitments relevant to land – although achieving the important end-of-decade ambitions embodied in these commitments will require immediate step-changes in action. The key points of these commitments are as follows:
- The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use represents a pledge from 141 countries, home to 91 per cent of the world’s forests, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 ‘while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation’.
- Over 100 countries signed up to the Global Methane Pledge to reduce global methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. The signatories include six of the world’s top 10 methane emitters – Argentina, Brazil, the EU, Indonesia, Pakistan and the US – and collectively cover countries responsible for nearly half of global methane emissions.
The subsequent COP27 was a lower-key affair, billed as the ‘implementation COP’. However, as with emissions pledges, it resulted in similar procrastination on mobilizing adaptation financing from developed countries, and on defining a Global Goal on Adaptation. It did, however, establish a breakthrough agreement on funding for the severe ‘loss and damage’ consequences of climate change and, for the first time, included a reference to nature-based solutions in the main political outcome document. This encouraged parties to consider nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches for mitigation and adaptation actions while ensuring relevant social and environmental safeguards. However, efforts to explicitly link nature and climate in the main outcome document were unsuccessful.
Desertification – UNCCD
Parties to the Rio convention most often overlooked – on desertification (UNCCD) – gathered for their 15th session (COP15) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in May 2022. Parties committed to accelerating the restoration of 1 billion ha of degraded land by 2030, supported by enhanced data gathering and monitoring and by the establishment of a new partnership model for large-scale integrated landscape investment programmes. Action was also announced on drought resilience, and there was a symbolic but important commitment to ensuring greater synergies among the three Rio conventions, including through national-level implementation of the treaties through nature-based solutions and target-setting.
Biodiversity – CBD
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) summit, COP15, was also disrupted by COVID-19 and split into two meetings – the initial online session was held in the autumn of 2021, but substantive in-person negotiations had to wait until the end of 2022, when they took place in Montreal, Canada, instead of in Kunming, China, as originally intended (though China retained the COP presidency). The summit came at a critical juncture following the release of a landmark IPBES report which indicates that nature is declining globally at alarming and unprecedented rates. Many of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (which had been guiding international efforts up to 2020) have not been achieved. With the expiration of these targets and associated international agreements, COP15 represented an important opportunity to establish a replacement framework and supporting mechanisms that can halt and reverse biodiversity loss, in line with the CBD 2050 vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’.
Despite a faltering process leading up to the conference, parties agreed a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF), the ‘Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’. The new framework commits parties to a set of goals and targets to end biodiversity loss. Target 3 has received particular attention for its potential to galvanize action, and has been compared, in this regard, with the Paris Agreement’s clear call to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C. Commonly referred to as ‘30×30’, it calls on countries to ensure that at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas are conserved by 2030. The GBF also aims to mobilize at least $200 billion of nature funding per year by 2030 from all sources – domestic, international, public and private – including at least $30 billion per year in international finance flows from developed countries to developing countries.
The GBF is a landmark agreement, albeit one that is non-binding, and the following years will be critical in ensuring the necessary steps are taken to implement and finance the agenda. It will also be important to ensure that such steps support progress against the agendas of the other two Rio conventions.
Outlook for future action on the Rio conventions
While some progress has been made since the pandemic disrupted timelines, rapidly increasing momentum on all these agendas in the coming years will be crucial for building trust between countries, and between citizens and governments. It will also be crucial for determining if the various 2030 targets under the Rio conventions, as well as the UNFCCC’s 1.5°C climate commitment, can be realized.
Unfortunately, progress is being stymied as governments focus on contemporary economic and security concerns, which are constraining bandwidth for international engagement and progressive national policymaking on environmental issues. If commitments at these summits are not backed up by immediate actions to fulfil them, there is a real risk that they will become empty promises that fail to deliver the urgently required path corrections. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was some optimism that ambitious recovery plans could galvanize collective action and create more sustainable and resilient approaches to economic development. The rhetoric of ‘building back better’ signalled the potential for green stimulus packages that could assist with driving ambition and realizing long-term environmental goals. There is scant evidence, however, that such opportunities are being seized and the lessons from the pandemic learned. Nevertheless, with the war in Ukraine driving activity to address energy and food security concerns, there may yet be accelerated action to improve energy efficiency, scale up renewable energy use, and reshape demand in ways that could meaningfully ‘bend the curve’ – enabling land-based sectors to provide stronger protection for nature, climate and health.
