It’s time to end the UN’s artificial divide between biodiversity and climate

The biodiversity and climate crises are interlinked – and failing to coordinate our response leaves critical ecosystems like forests and peatlands at risk 

Biodiversity and the climate are inextricably linked. As we lose or degrade ecosystems and their plants and animals, we release the carbon they have stored back into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. And as climate change worsens, we lose even more biodiversity to heat, drought and fire.  

On the other hand, protecting and restoring ecosystems so that they retain or recover their biodiversity is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight climate change. 

Despite this, governments continue to address these interlinked crises in isolation, holding separate talks on the global climate and on biodiversity, despite a compelling body of scientific evidence that demonstrates an urgent need for collaborative and synergistic solutions.  

This artificial split is especially odd as the UN climate and biodiversity conventions emerged together from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And there were very early calls for integrated work programmes.  

To this day, it remains a huge, missed opportunity for holistic, integrated and mutually reinforcing solutions. It is also an opportunity we can’t afford to squander as both crises accelerate rapidly and approach tipping points that could be catastrophic for all of humanity. 

Retaining and restoring the integrity of “high carbon” ecosystems like peatlands, mangroves, wetlands, forests and marshes, which store large amounts of carbon, is critical in our fight to limit warming to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  

They are the most effective way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The higher their integrity, the greater their ability to safely store carbon over the long term. And biodiversity plays an important role in underpinning the integrity of ecosystems.  

By protecting and restoring the natural composition and patterns of biodiversity in ecosystems, we not only preserve biodiversity, but also minimise the risk of losing the vast amounts of carbon stored in ecosystems to the atmosphere.  

Shared solutions for twin crises

Protecting and restoring biodiversity is our best tool to help ecosystems adapt to the impacts of climate change we are already locked in to, and to mitigate the impact of climate disasters and adapt to our changing world.  

Yet the pivotal role that high-biodiversity, high-carbon ecosystems play, including primary and old growth forests, is under-recognised in international fora, including – and notably – in the biodiversity and climate COPs. 

The need to ensure synergies between biodiversity protection and climate action has come up at least a dozen times in meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But the core issue – the need to protect and restore ecosystem integrity in order to maximise synergies – has yet to be integrated into these discussions.  

Thus, we still lack a proper basis to develop a joint, integrated framework between the two conventions, conversations remain siloed, and the critical importance of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity remains under-appreciated. Indeed, biodiversity is still far too often viewed as a useful, but largely non-essential “co-benefit” of climate action. This is a huge impediment to progress. 

The most fundamental failure appears to be that neither Convention fully recognises that we cannot solve the climate crisis unless we solve the biodiversity crisis at the same time; and that keeping ecosystem carbon out of the atmosphere is dependent on doing two things simultaneously: reducing fossil fuel emissions, and reducing loss and damage to carbon-dense ecosystems and the biodiversity that underpins them.  

Protecting ecosystem “integrity”

National-level CBD or biodiversity focal points often do not collaborate with their climate counterparts while many climate negotiators fail to recognise the risk that some “climate solutions” pose to biodiversity, including large-scale afforestation projects, bioenergy projects and the construction of dams and renewable energy projects in protected areas and other irrecoverable natural areas. 

At the global level, parties at the UNFCCC still fail to account for the importance of protecting and restoring carbon stocks within the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) rules, even as state parties are allowed to offset fossil fuel emissions through forestry-based carbon offsets.  

This problematic interpretation of “net zero” comes in part from the absence of ecosystem integrity as a measure. A joint work programme should establish the grounds for concomitant approaches like ecosystem integrity, which would distinguish the superior carbon storage attributes of high-integrity ecosystems like primary and old-growth forests. 

Recognising which types of ecosystems are effective in storing carbon safely for the long term would be a major step forward in ensuring effective management of natural carbon sinks. COP28’s global stocktake was successful in mentioning “ecosystem integrity”, but concrete action to take a more holistic approach and include it as a central starting point for nature-climate action is still missing.  

Joint work programme needed

Currently, the CBD is a few steps ahead of the UNFCCC in the synergies debate. At a biodiversity meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in May, delegates called for greater collaboration between the biodiversity and climate COPs, including a joint work programme between the conventions to harmonise biodiversity and climate actions. 

This could encompass direct changes to how governments design their contributions to meeting the goals and targets of both the biodiversity and climate COPs, and avoid negative trade-offs between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the UNFCCC and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to the CBD. 

At the biodiversity COP16 in Colombia this month and the COP29 UN climate summit in November, governments should include a call for such a work programme, which would provide the space and time for it to be operationalised in 2025 at COP30 in Brazil. 

Synergistic climate-biodiversity approaches centered on ecosystem integrity and primary ecosystems can also help unlock innovative and scaled up finance for protecting and restoring ecosystems in large landscapes while supporting Indigenous peoples and communities.

When rivers dry up in the Amazon and we see flooding in the Sahara and Saudi Arabia it should be obvious that we are fast running out of time. The scientific case for integrated solutions that maximise both biodiversity and climate mitigation benefits is clear and strong. Now we need decision-makers to act.  

Cover photo: A few days before the start of the World Nature Conference, CBD COP16 in Cali, Colombia, Greenpeace activists demonstrate on the United Nations square in front of the UN campus in Bonn, Germany, using a display of five dominoes showing plants and animals. (Photo: IMAGO/Bonn.digital via Reuters Connect)