“There is no solution to the climate crisis without the recognition and protection of our territorial rights,” they wrote in a statement that called on the government to demarcate more Indigenous territories in the Amazon.

The gathering of an estimated 8,000 people from across the country, other parts of South America, the Pacific Islands and Australia came at a critical juncture, as Brazil’s Supreme Court considered a proposal that would strip Indigenous Peoples of the right to veto projects that have an impact on their ancestral lands, including mining. It also would make it easier for non-Indigenous settlers to temporarily remain on demarcated Indigenous territory.    

“The UN has already warned that this proposal weakens Indigenous sovereignty and violates international human rights law,” the Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, a major Indigenous rights advocacy group in Brazil, said in a statement. “It represents a serious threat to environmental protection, given that Indigenous territories are critical to mitigating climate change and preserving biodiversity.”  

The proposed legislation is tied to the “time frame thesis” law in Brazil that states that Indigenous Peoples have rights only to land they occupied in October 1988. Communities say that law disregards the history of violence they suffered that made it impossible for them to occupy their traditional territories. The law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court but was passed by the government anyway last year. It is now undergoing a “conciliation” process, in which Indigenous Peoples have a minority voice, and a new bill is being drafted.  

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, has placed climate and Indigenous Peoples at the centre of his third term as leader of the largest country in Latin America. Reversing course from his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose aggressive deregulation saw rates of deforestation in the Amazon surge, da Silva is trumpeting the arrival of the UN climate conference, COP30, in the northern city of Belém in November. He has reinstated climate funds, brought back stricter greenhouse gas controls and vowed to end deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest by 2030. He has also prioritized the rights of Indigenous Peoples, naming the country’s first Indigenous minister and, after significant delays, demarcated 13 new Indigenous territories. “We are an administration that respects the Indigenous Peoples, recognizes their rights, and works day and night to protect them,” da Silva said in April.  

But many first peoples note that the pace of change is too slow, and they don’t want it to go unnoticed as the country prepares to welcome international delegates for the climate conference. The rally in Brasília included tense encounters with security forces, who on one occasion lobbed tear gas at protesters as they marched toward the congressional building.  

Kari Guajajara, a lawyer, told Al Jazeera at the Brasília gathering that Indigenous communities have made significant strides in reclaiming territory. But they have also suffered more invasions from illegal miners, poachers and loggers. “It’s a never-ending struggle,” she said.  

Take the plight of the Yanomami, one of the largest tribes in Brazil, who live in relative isolation in remote forest outposts. Numbering some 30,000 people, the Yanomami have suffered the devastating impacts of rampant illegal gold mining, which has polluted their riverways. A study in 2023 found that 84% of the nearly 300 Yanomami people from which researchers took samples had levels of mercury high enough to cause health problems. Mercury, which is commonly used to process gold in illegal mining, was also found in fish in the river the Yanomami rely on for food. “Our people are being poisoned and our women are afraid to bear children,” Dario Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, said at the Indigenous gathering.    

Da Silva stepped up efforts to combat illegal mining with dedicated teams sent in to patrol the deep crevices of the Amazon waterways. But Kopenawa says that protection has come and gone. “As soon as the armed forces left, the illegal miners returned,” he said. “Every day we see their planes coming and going. Sometimes 15 per day.”  

Indigenous leaders such as Kopenawa plan to bring these and other urgent issues to the forefront at COP30, stressing that their “significant” participation in decision-making processes is essential to environmental protection efforts. 

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Thirty weeks out from this year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, an advance brief of a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) finds that doubling down on global efforts to keep planetary heating to 1.5°C will lead to a significant net gain in global gross domestic product.

The economic benefits of climate action will accrue rapidly, UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said last week at the 16th annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin.

“Over the next 20 to 25 years, you’re talking about growth rates that translate into literally billions and billions of additional economic investments and returns on investments,” Steiner said.

With serious collective climate action, some wealthy countries will see their per capita GDP growth increase by more than 60% by 2050, while some poor ones could see that same metric soar by a “remarkable“ 124% from 2025 levels by the end of the century, Steiner says.

On the other hand, business-as-usual approaches to the climate crisis could see global GDP reduced by 33% by 2100.

Existing climate commitments won’t deliver

Titled “Investing in Climate for Growth and Development: The Case for Enhanced NDCs,” the brief claps back against claims that aggressive climate action is an economic non-starter.

First submitted in 2015, and due every five years, NDCs (nationally determined contributions) are voluntary plans that signatories to the Paris Agreement submit to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change outlining how their domestic policies will contribute to global climate action.

Countries are being urged to submit “enhanced” NDCs this year because the current trajectory of emissions is insufficient to keep warming to the Paris target of 1.5°C.

While Paris-aligned NDCs would provide a rapid and rising boost to global GDP, weak or unclear policies “risk delaying private investments and reducing GDP by 0.75% as early as 2030,” the brief’s authors say.

And those costs will multiply. “We’re actually talking about losing perhaps up to a third of global GDP this century,” Steiner warned his audience in Berlin.

When avoided climate impacts are factored in, the economic case for Paris-aligned climate action – beginning with a projected net GDP gain of 0.23% by 2040 – gets even stronger. “By reducing the risk of climate-induced events, an enhanced NDC scenario could prevent significant economic losses and increase global GDP by up to 3% by 2050 and up to 13% by 2100,” the OECD and UNDP say.

A (narrowing) window of opportunity

Most of the countries that signed on to the Paris Agreement missed this year’s February 10 deadline to submit their NDCs.

As of the end of February, only 18 of 195 NDCs had been submitted, and of those, only the United Kingdom’s is “in the right ballpark for a cost-effective path to 1.5ºC,” writes Climate Action Tracker. (Canada submitted its not-in-the-right-ballpark NDC on February 12.)

Countries are dragging their feet on their NDCs because of “shifting priorities” amidst “mounting economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and rising public debts,” the OECD and UNDP note.

That so many countries have yet to submit their NDCs means there is still time to change the global climate-action script, U.K.-based climate think tank E3G observes. “Key players still in the consultation phase – notably the EU, China, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, and Mexico – have a chance to lead the way ahead for the next decade and signal a cycle of positive reinforcement for other countries to follow suit in their ambition,” the think tank writes.

But again, much is at stake. Speaking at the Petersberg conference, UN climate secretary Simon Stiell warned that Europe’s economy will not survive the decades of extreme weather that are in the offing should strong global climate action fail to materialize, The Guardian reports.

By 2050, climate impacts would be shrinking Europe’s economy by 2.3% per year, Stiell told his audience. “Although those figures may appear small, the crucial point is that the economic contraction would continue year after year,” The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey writes. “By the end of two decades of such damage, the EU economy would cease to exist.”

All NDCs must be submitted by September if they are to be included in the UN’s next global synthesis of climate action, due out ahead of COP30.

The full OECD/UNDP report on the economic case for enhanced NDCs will be released in May.

This article was first published by The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original story here.

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The conference begins November 11 in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a shaky petrostate that earns 92% of its export revenue from oil and gas. This is the country where the very first oil wells in the world appeared in the 1840s. This year’s conference president, Mukhtar Babayev, is the nation’s ecology and natural resources minister, and a 26-year veteran of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. 

Moreover, the UN’s visionary commitment to develop a more just, tolerant society as part of its Paris Agreement goals also looks shaky when it works with an authoritarian family dictatorship. Freedom House, a Washington, D.C.–based non-profit, gives Azerbaijan a “freedom score” of seven out of 100 (down from nine last year, and well below the U.A.E.’s score of 18/100). An undercover investigation by Global Witness, detailed in a report released last week, exposed the interest of Azerbaijan leaders to use their COP leadership position to facilitate discussion of fossil fuel deals. The NGO secretly filmed Elnur Soltanov, the CEO of COP, discussing oil and gas deals ahead of the climate summit. 

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003, when he succeeded his father, Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official who ruled the country when it was a Soviet republic. The family has stayed in power by suppressing dissent, restricting press freedom and limiting civil liberties.

We have neither the time nor the patience for more scams or games of smoke and mirrors like your greenwashing fund.

– Pacific Climate Warrior Joseph Zane Sikulu

Earlier this year, Aliyev called Azerbaijan’s oil, which fuelled Russia for a century, “a gift from God” – signalling he’s not about to leave it in the ground. When Azerbaijan’s first large-scale solar power plant opened last October, Aliyev boasted of “moving towards a green agenda.” But the project offers few environmental benefits, since Azerbaijan plans to export the gas its own power plants no longer need. Worse, Azerbaijan waged war for three years against ethnic Armenians in their disputed, semi-autonomous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s initiative, which the European Parliament labelled ethnic cleansing, resulted in the flight of 136,000 Armenians. The region, Aliyev says, will now become a “green energy zone.”

Babayev likes to say that the country is acting as a bridge between East and West and the wealthy Global North and the Global South, seeking to raise US$1 billion from fossil fuel producers for a climate fund to help poor nations. Pacific Climate Warrior Joseph Zane Sikulu, from the low-lying islands of Tonga, calls it greenwash. “We have neither the time nor the patience for more scams or games of smoke and mirrors like your greenwashing fund.” 

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Since 1990, we have lost 90% of large fish, such as sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlin, groupers and cod, according to scientists in the Future of Marine Animal Populations program. Using highly sophisticated equipment, fishing fleets have taken so much life from the ocean over the years. We are the ultimate predator, attacking prey in the ocean at up to 14 times the rate of other predators.  

On December 19, governments from 188 countries reached an agreement at COP15 in Montreal to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030. While this is a significant achievement, given negotiators were at loggerheads a few days earlier, this is just the beginning of efforts to restore and protect our oceans. Here are seven ways governments can ensure that life in the world’s oceans can thrive.  

1. Put 30% target into action

The great thing about marine areas that exclude all fishing, dredging and bottom-trawling is how abundant they become with life. Nature bounces back quickly. A 2018 meta-analysis shows that compared to non-protected waters, such reserves have six times more biomass of fish and 15 times more sharks. Marine organisms are also reportedly 28% bigger.  

Protected areas seed the nearby ocean with increased fish and biodiversity, making life easier for local fishers. They become the mothers of ocean abundance, just as large old trees become the mother trees of the forest. In the Caribbean, when marine reserves closed 35% of St. Lucia’s waters, National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project reports that within five years fish catches around the reserve increased by between 45% and 90%. When Cabo Pulmo in the Gulf of California, Mexico, became a no-take marine park, the village became a tourism and diving mecca and the adjacent waters saw a 463% increase in marine biomass within 10 years.  

The goal that negotiators agreed to at COP15 (to protect 30% by 2030)  is a scientific target, not a political one. And it’s one that will take meaningful, swift action to reach. Only 2.7% of the world’s oceans is highly protected, according to a 2021 study. Less than 1% of Canada’s territorial waters are highly protected from fishing, according to the Marine Conservation Insitute. But the federal government said last summer it had protected 10% of its marine and coastal territory. 

2. Appreciate the economics of marine reserves

Fishing communities tend to start with the assumption that creating a marine reserve will destroy their livelihoods, but the data might surprise them. In the Cabo Pulmo marine reserve in Mexico, the spectacular recovery and a flourishing diving industry has made the local community quite wealthy. Off Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has generated 36 times more revenue than was previously gained from commercial fishing, according to Enric Sala, the director of the Pristine Seas project. Studies show that if we protect 29% of the global ocean, we could preserve two-thirds of all possible biodiversity benefits, and increase the annual global fish catch by 8.3 million tons, while eliminating 27% of the carbon emissions caused by bottom trawling.  

3. End all fishing in the high seas

The high seas are all the ocean area outside the 200 nautical miles of territorial waters that nations claim as their own. It yields just 4% of the global fish catch, mostly for gourmet dishes such as tuna sashimi and shark fin soup. Sala and his team at Pristine Seas have analyzed the high seas fishing fleets using satellite technology and calculated their costs and revenues. Most are profitable but depend on forced or slave labour and receive US$4 billion in annual subsidies from governments. If the human rights abuses and subsidies were to end, half of the fisheries would not be profitable, Sala’s work has found. If the world’s nations were to craft a treaty to end most high seas fishing, they could create a High Seas Reserve that would cover much of the global ocean.  

4. Ban bottom trawling and deep-sea mining

Bottom trawling has been compared to dragging a massive net across the Serengeti National Park, killing everything. It disrupts or destroys all life on the ocean floor, including corals, anemones, sponges and urchins. It crushes soft-bodied animals such as worms, amphipods, clams, crabs and lobsters, and it leaves behind a barren area that can take years to recover.  

Species fishers aren’t targeting animals, such as sharks, turtles and dolphins, which are thrown back into the sea as bycatch. Bottom trawling is happening in Canadian waters, too. In Europe, Greenpeace crews have been dropping boulders into the North Sea and the English Channel to try to stop the trawlers from destroying the sea-bed. It needs to end. 

Deep-sea mining is also disastrous for biodiversity. The International Seabed Authority has issued 31 licences for deep-sea mineral exploration, covering an area twice the size of France, and it is getting ready to receive applications for much more. This is despite an urgent warning from 600 scientists who have called for a pause because of the loss of unique and ecologically important species and populations that would result from the degradation and destruction of seafloor habitat. They want a cast-iron commitment from global leaders that they will protect the ocean, top to bottom.  

5. End the harmful fisheries subsidies

Every year, governments give US$35 billion in fisheries subsidies, $20 billion of which researchers say are harmful, supporting vessels that would otherwise be unviable, mostly from Europe, the United States, Japan and China. These subsidies have enabled them to sail farther and harvest more fish. Small-scale and artisanal fisheries employ 90% of all fishers, but the subsidies fund the big fleets. The responsibility to end the subsidies rests with the World Trade Organization. The Stop Funding Overfishing coalition, which represents 182 non-governmental organizations, is leading the campaign to end these subsidies. 

6. Protect territorial waters fisheries 

The territorial waters within 200 nautical miles of land generate 96% of the world’s catch. To protect these areas, one solution might be to establish local ocean trusts that are accountable to nature and future generations, giving non-fishers a majority on their governing boards with a duty to ensure that the inshore marine ecosystem remains healthy. The marine property rights would be placed with the trust, and local and Indigenous fishers would be invited to organize cooperatives to manage the coastal fisheries on behalf of their communities. 

7. Teach all children to appreciate the oceans

For most people, the ocean is a realm we know almost nothing about. And our ignorance has let the long-liners, bottom trawlers and pair trawlers do such damage. If schools and parents accepted the challenge to inspire all children about the beauty and abundance of the ocean and teach them about the wounds inflicted by humans that are destroying marine life, we would have a better chance at saving it, enabling nature to recover.  

Guy Dauncey is the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible.

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The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, opened the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Montréal with a stark message: “Without nature, we are nothing. Nature is our life-support system, and yet humanity seems hell bent on destruction.”

The summit brought together delegates from over 190 countries to negotiate the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, the implementation of which will require a transformation in the way we produce, consume and trade goods and services that rely on and impact biodiversity.

Companies and investors have, therefore, been paying close attention. Businesses and investors have a critical role to play in biodiversity and conservation efforts and need to invest in sustainable production and extraction methods.

On Dec. 14, the Finance and Biodiversity Day of the summit, speakers across the financial sector discussed various ways of aligning financial investments with the new biodiversity framework. In anticipation of these finance talks, a new global engagement initiative, Nature Action 100 was launched to drive investors’ action on nature-related risks and opportunities.

As a scholar in sustainable finance, I believe that while these initiatives and discussions are important, we need more targeted and urgent investments in nature-friendly solutions to reverse biodiversity loss.

“Without nature, we are nothing”

Numerous scientific studies point to alarming statistics on the rates of biodiversity loss. The Living Planet Report 2022 shows an average decline of 69% in wildlife populations since 1970, thus emphasizing the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change driven by human activities.

Unlike the climate crisis that led to the signing of the Paris Agreement, biodiversity loss has received little attention until now. However, the risks from biodiversity loss are enormous.

According to an OECD report, ecosystem services from biodiversity, such as crop pollination, water purification, flood protection and carbon sequestration, are worth an estimated US$125-140 trillion per year. About US$44 trillion per year of this global output is dependent on nature .

Bending the curve of biodiversity loss

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s fifth Global Biodiversity Outlook summary report for policymakers, published in 2020, suggests a portfolio of actions to restore biodiversity.

These actions include the restoration of landscapes and marine and coastal ecosystems, redesigning agricultural systems through innovative productivity-enhancing approaches, deploying green infrastructure, enabling sustainable and healthy diets, rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use, and many more.

Businesses and investors have a critical role to play in each of these action domains, especially when it comes to shifting to more sustainable production and manufacturing processes, investing in energy efficiency and waste reduction, conservation of natural resources, and investing in climate solutions that also support biodiversity.

Biodiversity awareness in the world of finance

The awareness about biodiversity risks remains very limited within the finance community. This year, the non-profit CDP, which runs the world’s environmental disclosure system, included new questions to assess firms’ approaches to biodiversity.

The results show that three-quarters of 7,700 respondent companies do not assess their impact on biodiversity. Most companies in nature-damaging sectors, such as apparel and manufacturing, are still failing to take meaningful action to stop biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.

According to a 2021 OECD report, nature-related dependencies, impacts and risks are poorly understood and almost entirely uncompensated for in the financial sector. This leads to capital misallocation that ultimately undermines the wellbeing of society.

There are, however, positive signs. Thirty-one per cent of companies in the CDP survey have made a public commitment and/or endorsed biodiversity-related initiatives, and 25% of respondents are planning to do so within the next two years.

The growing awareness is confirmed by the 2022 Global Risks Report, which found that biodiversity loss ranks third among the top 10 global risks by severity over the next 10 years.

Integrating nature in financial decisions

One of the key challenges for investors and lenders is getting the relevant data to make evidence-based decisions to allocate funds. This is in line with the ever-increasing demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) data disclosure.

The newly launched international initiative Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures is developing a risk management and disclosure framework for organizations to report and act on evolving nature-related financial risks.

Biodiversity is also attracting the attention of financial policymakers. In March 2022, the Network for Greening the Financial System, a coalition of more than 120 central banks and supervisors, published a new statement, acknowledging that biodiversity loss could lead to significant macroeconomic and financial stability risks.

The new investor-led initiative Nature Action 100 builds on similar initiatives to help investors engage with companies that are contributing to biodiversity loss. Engaging with companies to reduce their negative impact on nature can be a powerful tool for change, especially when coming from large investors and asset owners.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is now considering biodiversity in the development of new ESG disclosure standards. Addressing COP15 delegates, Emmanuel Faber, chair of the ISSB, announced the appointment of two special advisors to provide strategic counsel on issues relating to natural ecosystems and ‘just transition.’

The future lies in impact investing

While these initiatives are crucial, focusing on data disclosure is not sufficient. Even if we quickly agree on disclosure frameworks and measurements around biodiversity, disclosures that are voluntary and not supported by regulation are vulnerable to greenwashing which is widespread in the ESG space.

We need to encourage more targeted investments in nature-positive solutions that reverse biodiversity loss. Impact investing — investing money with the intention to benefit society and the environment — offers a framework for this.

Impact investing starts with identifying a societal challenge and then screens for investment opportunities that provide measurable solutions. But impact investments remain very small relative to other responsible investment strategies. Many impact investors use the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to set their impact goals and measure outcomes.

To tackle biodiversity loss, we need more investments in SDG14 (life below water) and SDG15 (life on land). Despite the importance of ocean ecosystems for local livelihoods, food security and carbon sequestration, SDG14 receives the least amount of funding of any of the SDGs.

Canada is a global leader in clean tech innovation and many companies at the nexus of nature and climate are emerging across the country, including innovation in ocean tech, clean marine transportation and regenerative agriculture.

But financing remains a challenge, especially at early stages when risk is high and scale is lacking to attract large investors. More innovative financing mechanisms and instruments are needed to fill this gap.

Investing in Indigenous-led projects can also advance both reconciliation and biodiversity goals, because Indigenous lands contain 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

The Finance and Biodiversity Day at COP15 stimulated important discussions on how to align financial flows with the new biodiversity framework, but real actions remain to be seen. We need action now, as time is not on our side.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Much is at stake as anxious discussions get underway at the long-awaited two-week conference, originally scheduled to occur in China two years ago.

But as Cambodian delegate Nath Pang puts it, there’s hope in the air too.

On COP15’s opening day, Pang is listening to Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault explain Canada’s main goals for the conference: get the parties to agree to a target of 30% protection of biodiversity by 2030 (120 of 196 attending countries had already committed to this “30×30” goal); reverse biodiversity loss by 2030; provide funding for developing countries, like Pang’s, to ensure targets can be met; and integrate Indigenous land stewardship knowledge throughout the process.

“In Cambodia,” Pang says, “we aren’t quite as concerned about climate change, but we are very concerned about the loss of species. My hope is that this COP will help us all put a stop to this.”

Unlike COP27, which took place earlier in the fall in Egypt and was focused solely on reducing the emissions that cause climate change, this gathering is intended to hammer out a framework governing what’s called the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This framework will set targets for how humanity, collectively, will conserve biodiversity, use its components sustainably, and share the benefits from the use of genetic resources equitably.

More than 17,000 delegates representing 196 governments, scientists and climate activists came to Montreal for what is billed as our last best chance to halt and reverse the damage humanity has inflicted on ecosystems worldwide.

The need is urgent. Earlier in the day, we’d heard UN Secretary-General António Guterres describe humanity, aptly, as a “weapon of mass extinction.” Cold hard science bears this out: according to a recent World Wildlife Fund study, since 1970, monitored species (of mammals, birds, insects and plant life) have declined by 69%.

Yet we rely on biodiversity for human survival: everything from maintaining and expanding forest cover to absorb carbon dioxide, to innovations in medicine, to wetlands that can slow down and reverse the destructive impacts of coastal flooding. One expert at the conference likened the destruction of biodiversity to collectively committing suicide.

To halt and reverse the situation, experts hammered out 22 targets that would give the international community a clear pathway to that goal of 30% conservation by 2030. All those Corporate Knights spoke to at the conference agree: failure to get a deal is not an option.

We are very concerned about the loss of species. My hope is that this COP will help us all put a stop to this.

-Nath Pang, Cambodian delegate to COP15

Yet the path to consensus is by no means smooth. The text of the framework retained 1,200 bracketed phrases where negotiators had yet to reach agreement on final wording at the time of printing. Of the five largest landmasses (the U.S., China, Russia, Brazil and Canada), only Canada has signalled willingness to commit to the 30×30 target. (As a non-signatory to the CBD, the U.S. isn’t even at the table.)

Brazil’s new president, Lula da Silva, has pledged to halt and reverse the destruction to the Amazon, but he won’t be sworn in until January, after the conference closes. And NGOs have criticized the current presidency of the CBD, China, for deliberately downplaying the negotiations’ significance. While the UN is there in force, led by Guterres, the only head of government present is that of the host country, Canada. (One of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s conditions for hosting the conference in Montreal was ensuring that the Chinese government would tolerate space for protest and dissent.)

The business community at COP15 is also split. One lobby, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, has published rigorous guidelines for becoming a nature-positive business; another, the International Fertilizer Industry Association, is actively undermining language related to fertilizer use, as per reports from InfluenceWatch, a lobbyist tracking organization. (IFIA denies this charge.) The issue of biopiracy is another sticking point, with delegates from developing countries accusing those from northern countries of excluding them from profits related to medicines developed with materials from the Global South.

So what does success look like for COP15? At the minimum, writes Patrick Greenfield in The Guardian, success includes substantive action on overconsumption, intensive agriculture and pollution, and enough resources for ambitious conservation efforts – without infringing on human rights.

Working in humanity’s favour at COP15 are two things that are also on full display: the creativity of our imaginations, as illustrated by Dutch artist Thijs Biersteker’s robotic seedling, and our ability to adapt. As Cambodian delegate Pang notes, “From this conference, we will have more of the tools we need to protect our biodiversity. That means we still have a chance.”

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After November’s climate summit talks ran into overtime, with water and air conditioning in Sharm el-Sheikh growing scarce, negotiators landed a victory: wealthy nations agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable recover and rebuild from the worst climate disasters. 

“We have struggled for 30 years on this path,” said Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman, who saw a third of her country devastated by flooding earlier in the year. “The establishment of a fund is not about dispensing charity. It is clearly a down payment on the longer investment in our joint futures.” 

But the talks left some diplomats questioning the integrity of Egypt’s COP27 presidency, the Financial Times reported, with negotiating teams given insufficient time to review crucial decision text before it was adopted. 

“I’ve never experienced anything like this: untransparent, unpredictable, and chaotic,” a delegate told the Times. “This is 3D chess played by tired, grumpy humans who just don’t want to be here,” added one observer. 

The latest in the annual series of “chaotic, bloated carnivals” had Globe and Mail European Bureau Chief Eric Reguly convinced it’s time to shut the COPs down and replace them with something that works. None of the conferences has “ended with formal agreements to reduce fossil-fuel use,” he writes, when that’s “the only metric that matters as average global temperatures rise to dangerous levels.” 

Reguly suggests replacing the COP with small, expert negotiating teams working year-round on specific, urgent issues like emission reductions, methane controls, or forest protection. Once they got something done, “a small summit devoid of human clutter could be used to push any deal over the finish line.” 

Some of that “human clutter” has a purpose, ensuring that traditionally disenfranchised voices are heard and building international connections to advance real climate solutions. But whether that makes the COP a carnival, a trade show, or an essential forum for climate justice, not all the activity must co-located with the negotiations that are the COP’s raison d’être. Much of it could be extended to a far wider participant group in a hybrid forum. But that idea has been dismissed by anyone associated with the COP process who’s heard it. 

While the success or failure of COPs often boils down to the substance of final pledges agreed to by negotiators, some academics suggest that failures like the 2009 Copenhagen COP have led to successes like the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s important not to lose sight of this big picture view, write professors David Tindall, of the University of Berlin, Maria Brockhaus, of the University of Helsinki, Mark Stoddard, of Memorial University, and Marlene Kammerer, a senior researcher at the University of Bern.  

The academics argue in The Conversation that these meetings may seem to have small impacts to start, but “may result in increasing returns over time”, making them “critical events” that can “shape the context for social issues or movements.” And while a lot of attention is focused on what national government negotiators are doing, the conferences also serve as an important meeting place for other levels of government. 

The complaints about this year had UN Climate Secretary Simon Stiell promising a review to make the COP process as “effective as possible”. But he’s sure to face more of the same at COP28 next fall. The United Arab Emirates is already positioning the gathering in Dubai as a chance to entrench the fossil fuels its own economy depends on. 

At COP27, meanwhile, even the win on loss and damage was limited to process, not substance—a recurring theme with climate gains in United Nations fora dating back to 1995. The decision left open key issues about how the fund will operate, who will qualify, and where the money will come from. Delegates assigned those questions to a working group that will report back to next year’s COP. 

“What we have is an empty bucket,” said Power Shift Africa Director Mohamed Adow. “We need money to make it worthwhile.” Given rich countries’ past track record for keeping their climate finance promises, it’s a good bet the backsliding on loss and damage has already begun. 

Elsewhere, COP27 left an overwhelming accumulation of unfinished business. 

“Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text,” said COP26 chair Alok Sharma. “Clear follow-through on the phasedown of coal? Not in this text. Clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text. The energy text? Weakened in the final minutes.” The last-minute provision, inserted by Egypt’s fossil-fuel-friendly COP presidency, backed natural gas as a form of “low-emission energy”. Media onsite spoke to sleep-deprived delegates who’d voted for the final text without noticing that language. 

“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phaseout of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. 

It remains to be seen whether that process can be fixed and protected before COP28 assembles in one of the world’s leading petro-states next year. 

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It has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and 50% of plants. Between 1970 and 2016 alone, humans wiped out 68% of the world’s mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. The world’s governments support this destructive activity with subsidies worth between US $1.8 trillion and $6 trillion a year ($5 billion to $16 billion a day).

The insurance giant Swiss Re Group has warned that half of our global GDP depends on high-functioning biodiversity and that a fifth of the world’s economies are consequently at risk of ecosystem collapse. Meanwhile, almost every country is missing its targets on biodiversity protection. It’s unclear whether the thousands of delegates meeting in Montreal this week for the latest United Nations biodiversity conference, COP15, will make any significant progress. But here are seven steps they can take to ensure that nature is included in all financial decision-making.

1. Require every business to report on its impact on nature

Governments require annual financial reporting, but there’s no column for “impact on nature.” More than 330 businesses and financial institutions in 52 countries have urged world leaders to make this mandatory by 2030 and are pushing for governments to agree to this at COP15. This would be good but not sufficient. Every business needs to become nature-positive, meaning that it does more to restore nature than it does to harm it. The assaults on nature will continue as long as this remains voluntary.

2. Add a circular economy tax to most products

Since 1970, globally, our use of fossil fuels more than doubled, our extraction of biomass has almost tripled, our extraction of metals has increased fourfold, and our production of plastics has increased 11-fold. In total, this comes to 100 billion tonnes a year of materials, some 15 tonnes per person. All this extraction exacts its toll on nature, and only 8.6% of the materials we use is being recycled. France has developed an anti-waste law for a circular economy, including the principle that whoever creates a product should be responsible for its demise. Amsterdam is aiming to reduce the amount of new raw materials it uses by half by 2030, and to become a fully circular city by 2050.

Every large company should be required to develop a circular economy and damage-to-nature scorecard for its major products. Governments could then enact a circular economy accountability act, with an annual scorecard that would require companies to report their scores, along with how they’re going to make progress, as Scotland is proposing to do. They could then impose a circular economy tax on all major products, graded by their scores, using the revenues to pay for recycling, composting and the restoration of nature. Products that are easy to repair or recycle, and that do no harm to nature, would carry no tax.

3. Make ecocide a criminal offence

It should be criminal to wipe out life on the ocean floor with massive trawler nets,  or to destroy a tropical rainforest to produce palm oil. The ongoing campaign to add ecocide as a crime to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court began 12 years ago, following efforts by the Scottish lawyer Polly Higgins. In November 2022, the Belgian government proposed writing ecocide into domestic law.

Pope Francis, Britain’s Labour Party and the International Corporate Governance Network (an investor-led organization managing US$70 trillion in assets) have all called on governments to criminalize ecocide. The European Union has launched a feasibility study on the issue. If corporate executives knew they could be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against nature, they might think twice before approving another assault.

4. Reward landowners who are champions for nature

Today, only 15% of the world’s land, 15% of freshwaters and 7% of our oceans are protected. The COP15 goal is to protect 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050, so there’s a long way to go.

Recognizing the critical role of Indigenous land stewardship and developing more Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas is an essential beginning. Private landowners also have a role to play. What if all landowners with more than 1,000 acres were required to submit an annual report on their impact on nature? Those impacts could include deforestation, tree planting, the use of chemical pesticides, the protection of endangered species, rewilding, native species restoration and more. Landowners who scored high on positive initiatives would qualify for a tax break as a reward for being a champion for nature. Once established, the tax could be applied to smaller landowners.

5. End nature-destructive subsidies

Every year, governments globally give out US$700 billion in farm subsidies, according to a 2019 report by the Food and Land Use Coalition, and 90% of those subsidies have been deemed harmful to nature by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. They also give US$620 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry, US$320 billion a year to harmful water management, US$155 billion a year to unsustainable forestry and US$35 billion a year to harmful fisheries, according to a 2022 study by Earth Track. Phasing out these environmentally damaging subsidies should be the bare minimum that countries agree to at the COP15 talks, says Li Shuo, a policy advisor at Greenpeace China.

6. Use central bank credit guidance to direct investments

As long as people can continue to profit by investing in nature’s destruction without any repercussions, the disaster will continue.

The European Union has developed a sustainable taxonomy to inform bankers and investors which activities are harmful to nature and the climate, and which are not. Like everything, it is vulnerable to political distortion, but it lays down an essential principle: that we should draw a line in the sand that says “do not invest here.”

If governments and central bankers truly registered what deep trouble we are in, they would work together to issue credit guidance, warning banks not to invest in red-listed activities and withdrawing privileges such as deposit insurance and central bank assistance from those that ignore the guidance. The Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, has begun considering these concerns through its report Indebted to Nature, which it released in 2020.

7. Use stronger legislation to protect nature

Targets are useless without legislation to back them up; Canada has missed almost every biodiversity target it has set. It is because of the weakness or absence of legislation that nature continues to be harmed. Forest companies are allowed to continue clear-cutting (roughly a million acres of boreal forest a year) and farmers are allowed to continue poisoning birds and bees (Canada backed away from an outright ban on toxic neonicotinoids in 2021).

Voluntary measures only reach those who are willing to put nature above profit. Governments must pass stronger laws. For Canada, this means a strong nature and biodiversity act. Activists are calling for similar pieces of legislation in Australia, Britain, the European Union and elsewhere.

To make these seven steps a reality, we need a resounding call for action from citizens, schools, colleges, businesses and local governments. COP15 is Canada’s chance to show leadership, or let the biodiversity of the planet vanish.

Guy Dauncey is the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World Is Possible.

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An agreement by the world’s governments to phase out all fossil fuels would have been a welcome progression from last year’s Glasgow climate pact. It called on countries to “[accelerate] efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, making it the first UN treaty to acknowledge the need to do something about the main source of greenhouse gas emissions.

But at COP27, widespread anxieties about the cost and availability of energy made many governments cautious about expressing a clear intention to phase out all fossil fuels in the resulting agreement. The COP27 text reiterated the COP26 decision but failed to broaden it to encompass oil and gas, despite a proposal by India to that end (a move that would have helped take the emphasis off coal, of which it is a major consumer).

Still, growing support for such an extension is evident. More than 80 countries (including the EU and US) supported India’s proposal. Many nations are building international agreements outside of the UN negotiation process. After the failure of COP27, the question is what should happen next in the fight against continued fossil fuel use.

There is no doubt that, to preserve a liveable climate, the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas must be rapidly reduced and, depending on how optimistic you are about carbon capture technologies, phased out altogether.

Despite large planned increases in fossil fuel production, recent research (released just before COP27) found, for the first time, that global demand for each of the fossil fuels will peak or plateau in all scenarios within 15 years. This is partly due to attempts to reduce energy use and increase renewables in the wake of the gas shortage created by sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

As the dangers of extracting and burning fossil fuels have become increasingly apparent, many experts, campaigners, international organisations and, increasingly, governments have contested the moral legitimacy of these activities. In a recent journal article, we argued that the Glasgow agreement represented a breakthrough (albeit a modest one) in the emergence of international anti-fossil fuel norms.

An international norm is a morally appropriate standard of behaviour among states (for example, prevailing norms prohibit foreign aggression, piracy, or the testing and use of nuclear weapons). International conferences such as COP27 catalyse emerging norms by specifying them in formal declarations.

COP decisions are not binding and the language on fossil fuels at COP26 was watered down during negotiations. But the Glasgow text reflected a growing sense among governments that certain activities relating to fossil fuels (like generating electricity from coal without capturing the CO₂ and policies which make fossil fuels cheaper to extract and consume) are becoming illegitimate.

In the coming years, there will be growing civil society and diplomatic pressure for a phase-out of all fossil fuels in a COP decision.

The lack of progress on fossil fuels reflects the upheavals in the energy sector as well as the constraints of the climate negotiations themselves, which operate by consensus. This often produces decisions that reflect the lowest common denominator among nearly 200 countries with diverse energy profiles and interests, and COP27 was no exception.

Large oil and gas producers are profiting handsomely from current market prices and have lobbied governments to permit them to explore and drill for yet more oil and gas. At COP27, there were more oil and gas industry lobbyists than the combined number of delegates from the ten countries most affected by climate change. Little wonder COP27 did not yield consensus on phasing down all fossil fuels.

Other international initiatives are not bound by such procedural constraints, and there was more progress on the sidelines of COP27. The Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (Boga), an initiative launched around the time of COP26 by Denmark and Costa Rica that aims to phase out oil and gas production, attracted new members Chile, Fiji and the US state of Washington, with Portugal upgraded to “core member” status.

Emulating a deal between South Africa and several wealthy countries from a year earlier, a new just energy transition partnership was launched between Indonesia and Japan, Canada, the US, Denmark and others, to help Indonesia transition from coal to renewables.

What more can be done?

In the coming years, there will be growing civil society and diplomatic pressure for a phase-out of all fossil fuels in a COP decision. But independent initiatives among states, like Boga, must be nurtured in parallel, and the high-level pledges made in these initiatives must be implemented.

For instance, a group of nations pledged at COP26 to end public finance for fossil fuels by the end of 2022. While some countries are on track to meet this goal, others are not following through.

Countries should also develop an international agreement to restrict and phase out fossil fuels. Building on a global campaign for such an agreement, the small island nations of Tuvalu and Vanuatu have called for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. We suggest two ways to advance these efforts which draw on our recent research.

First, Tuvalu and Vanuatu could encourage their Pacific Island counterparts to create a regional fossil free zone treaty that prohibits the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels throughout the territories and territorial waters of members.

Second, more must be done to name and shame governments, especially rich ones, who are expanding how much fossil fuel they extract and burn. This effort demands greater transparency around government activities. A new global registry of fossil fuels is helping to catalogue this information. But governments should also disclose all fossil fuel infrastructure that is being planned or considered on their territory, or with their support.

The COP27 outcome is a timely reminder that curbing the growth in fossil fuels will not come about through consensus-oriented negotiations among governments that include those corrupted by the fossil fuel industry. It will require social movements pressuring leaders to legislate a managed phase out of fossil fuels, while ensuring a just transition for affected workers and communities. And it will require pioneering governments to work together internationally to forge new alliances that accelerate this goal.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article was updated Nov. 15, 2022, with Indonesia’s climate finance deal announced.

Fergus Green is a lecturer in political theory and public policy at UCL. Harro van Asselt is a professor of climate law and policy at the University of Eastern Finland.

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The oil and gas sector’s activities at COP27 follow another massive quarter for Canadian oil-sands companies, with quarterly net earnings staying near $2 billion. In theory, these companies’ financial strength should position them to invest aggressively in their energy transition. But, as Canada’s environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, pointed out recently, they are not doing so. Worse, they continue to lobby against climate action.

Oil and gas companies need to invest today if they are to have any hope of meeting 2030 emissions reduction targets and reducing their exposure to climate risks. The longer they wait, the more the risk grows, not only to themselves, but also to their investors and to anyone who depends on a functioning climate.

While delaying direct investment to reduce their emissions, Canadian oil-sands companies have been very active with a public relations effort called the Pathways Alliance. This organization represents Canada’s six largest oil-sands producers, operating approximately 95% of the country’s oil-sands production. You may have heard of it, because it is running an extensive promotional campaign claiming plans of investing billions in carbon capture and storage.

Unfortunately, the emphasis of the campaign has been on the promise of action if the companies can receive more government subsidies, with few details on when these planned investments will materialize in the member companies’ capital expenditures. Given that these companies have healthy balance sheets and investment tax credit programs for carbon capture and hydrogen production, they should be getting on with it instead of asking for more subsidies. And, given doubts about the feasibility of carbon capture at scale, as well as the fact that it won’t deal with the majority of emissions that occur at the tailpipe, this technology alone can’t be seen as the solution. We need an actual energy transition, too.

Canada’s Paris Agreement goals are to achieve a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030 through all sectors and parts of our economy. As part of this effort, the government has started discussions about a 2030 cap on oil and gas emissions – a sector that accounts for more than a quarter of Canada’s emissions and has been the fastest-growing source since 2005.

Yet these oil and gas companies have not converted their stated support for the Paris Agreement and commitment to net-zero by 2050 into support for action by 2030 through a cap on their own emissions. Instead they are claiming the 2030 cap is “unnecessary” and is a “very extreme stretch goal.”

Lobbying that is misaligned with the Paris Agreement is endemic to the industry. A recent report by responsible investing organization SHARE on oil and gas lobbying found an increase in commitments and disclosure by Canadian companies, but “many companies continue to promote the regulatory status quo or limit climate action either through direct engagement with policymakers or by financing industry associations.”

Moreover, U.K.-based InfluenceMap finds that while the oil and gas sector has shown some improvements on climate goals over the last five years, no fossil fuel company in the world is supporting the climate policy pathways needed to deliver the goals of the Paris Agreement. It also finds the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to be the fifth most obstructionist of all industry associations in the world on climate action.

With record quarterly earnings and increased government support for carbon capture, it’s past time for oil and gas companies to act on their rhetoric by making actual investments to reduce pollution and transition toward clean energy. Otherwise, the misalignment between words and action will increase material financial risks to the companies’ investors, increase systemic climate risks to our economy and society, and delay the climate action we need to reduce economic uncertainty and volatility.

Duncan Kenyon is the director of corporate engagement with Investors for Paris Compliance (I4PC) and has more than 20 years of environmental, business and climate change leadership experience.

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