At first glance, the growing alignment of climate and biodiversity challenges in global politics may seem harmless. Indeed, there is a strong argument that it is a much-needed and long overdue development, since addressing these inextricably-connected challenges together may ensure that gains in one area do not lead to costs in the other.

Yet as decision-makers gather this month for COP16 of the Convention of Biodiversity in Colombia there is growing pushback from national governments who want the global governance of each issue to stay in its own lane.

At stake in these debates is not only what is integrated, but how it is done. Among the concerns that have been raised are two key questions: Does the growing use of nature-based solutions signals a climate ‘take over’ of the biodiversity agenda? Are we witnessing a deepening financialization and technologization of nature?

Three years have passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) issued their first joint report, and called for the international community to recognize that neither climate change nor biodiversity “will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together.” Yet progress to doing so within the international regimes that govern these two issues—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)—has remained painfully slow.

A failure to integrate these two agendas now means that COP16 may end without sufficient progress in doing so, and leave the political momentum to the UNFCCC and a host of non-state actors forging new initiatives at the climate/biodiversity frontier. If left unchecked by the biodiversity community, such developments may to exacerbate the very issues they seek to avoid.

Making Room for NBS

The room for progress on these issues is ample, however.  A wealth of transnational governance initiatives (TGIs) that bring together state and non-state actors have emerged amidst growing interest in new projects and interventions at the climate/biodiversity frontier.

While TGIs have been established within each domain and recognized by the international regimes for climate and biodiversity for nearly a decade, the process of alignment is creating a new architecture of global governance. Established TGIs must extend their scope to straddle the climate/biodiversity frontier. Multiple new TGIs are being developed and launched.

A growing interest in “nature-based solutions” (NBS) is central both to the political challenges of aligning the two multilateral regimes and the explosion of new TGIs. These NBS interventions work with nature to address climate, biodiversity and other sustainable development challenges—and build on a broader history of deploying nature to achieve particular societal goals that ranges from urban parks to REDD+ to ecosystem services, flood protection and much more.

Yet positioning NBS as interventions that can tackle multiple societal challenges at once is distinguishing them from these previous efforts. And while NBS were formally recognized by UNEP in 2022, their inclusion within international biodiversity policy has caused considerable concern.

During negotiations for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which was finally agreed in December 2022, many states and other groups expressed opposition to using NBS to reach biodiversity goals. In part, this resistance reflects fears of a climate take-over of global biodiversity governance, or what is sometimes referred to as the “climatization” of global environmental politics. In particular, this phenomenon could have very real implications for the funds available for conservation measures, as well as for the government departments charged with writing and implementing national biodiversity action plans.

Yet amongst the TGIs currently crossing this frontier, initial indicators suggest that initiatives which originate from biodiversity concerns are able to cast climate action as a “co-benefit” of nature recovery—and in so doing seek to leverage additional resources for biodiversity action.

The Carbon Challenge

Further concerns which have been articulated stem from the very foundations of a NBS approach, and what its implementation might mean for how nature is valued and accounted for, by, and for whom.

Ever since policy goals and market mechanisms were established as means of governing both climate and biodiversity, enabling the translation of the qualities of ecosystem services into monetary terms, such financing mechanisms have become central to politics and governance while engendering a growing set concerns. Not least because of the ease with which carbon can be measured in comparison to other benefits (such as biodiversity, air quality, health, and well-being), the mitigation potential of nature has dominated historically. It is now rapidly becoming the key driver for NBS, especially as actors globally seek to reach net-zero targets.

Unsurprisingly, long-standing concerns about how powerful and well-resourced actors can exploit the carbon potential of nature to continue business as usual have come to the fore. In particular,  international biodiversity community seeks to ensure that conservation and restoration are not simply used as a means through which to enable fossil fuel extraction and exploitation.

The growing use of NatureTech—tools which enable the benefits of NBS and other forms of biodiversity conservation and restoration to be measured through the use of technologies including remote sensing, satellite data and the application of AI—may further exacerbate this focus on readily quantifiable benefits. This trend also may come at the expense of the more complex or intangible value NBS can bring for development, well-being and just transitions.

Centering Principles and Standards at COP16

As COP16 approaches, these concerns have yet to be allayed. But a response which seeks merely to exclude NBS or climate action from the Global Biodiversity Plan and its implementation is surely short-sighted.

Interventions which seek to align action for climate and for nature can, if designed for multiple benefits and to address issues of social justice, be a force for ecological and human progress. Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests ways NBS implementation can succeed in addressing climate, nature and sustainable development—including growing evidence that simple principles and standards can guide the NBS use towards these ends.

COP16 provides a vital opportunity for a diversity of actors in the global community to insist that such principles and standards are in place. With growing momentum across the climate change regime and multiple TGIs, it is unlikely that the NBS genie is going back into its bottle. Members of biodiversity community face a stark choice between turning their back on these developments, and potentially allowing some of its worst fears to be realized, or creating an enabling environment where climate change action can be aligned with biodiversity goals for the good of both nature and people.