Leading CEOs called for Greater Private Sector Action on Nature and Biodiversity and a Just Transition by signing up to the UN Global Compact think lab on biodiversity and nature. The UN Global Compact, in partnership with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center, launched the UN Global Compact Think Lab on Biodiversity and Nature to showcase holistic approaches for business to deliver strong corporate thought leadership and policy recommendations in the lead up to the Biodiversity COP16 and Climate COP29.
BloombergNEF launched a report in consultation with the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) showcasing how nature risks have materialised into significant financial consequences for leading companies across sectors and geographies over the last two decades. The report shares ten case studies where nature-related financial risks led to material impacts for businesses across a diverse range of economic sectors. Read more about Nature-based Insights’ work with TNFD.
The COP28 presidency, with the United Nations climate body and member countries, issued a joint statement on climate, nature and people that underscored the need to urgently address climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation together “in a coherent, synergetic and holistic manner, in accordance with the best available science”.
The Nature Positive Initiative released a definition of Nature Positive, clarifying that it is a global and societal goal that individual organisations can contribute to. See also, this article on Nature Positive.
The Urban Nature Programme was launched to bolster nature-focused investments and integration in urban environments by providing financial and technical support to catalyse urban natural solutions. The initiative will spotlight over 20 pioneering cities and encourage a growing number of ambitious cities to integrate nature into their strategies.
The Nature Positive for Climate Action campaign has reached over 150 since it was launched by Razan Al Mubarak last summer. This includes adopting science-based targets for nature, following guidance for food and use and agriculture, disclosing their impacts, risks and opportunities through the Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, and addressing deforestation risk.
The world’s top multilateral development banks launched a global “task force” at COP28 to scale up the number and size of ‘debt-for-nature’ swaps that countries can do.
Forestry
The TNFD published additional guidance to help organisations with business models or value chains in the forestry and paper sectors apply the LEAP approach to their context. Read more about Nature-based Insights’ work with TNFD here
Verra released its new methodology for protecting forests, including a new approach to setting baselines for calculating emission reductions from forest conservation activities under the landmark Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program.
The Environmental Defense Fund, Flora & Fauna International, the National Wildlife Federation, Nature4Climate, the We Mean Business Coalition, and the Wildlife Conservation Society issued a statement that Paris Agreement forest carbon transactions should follow the Tropical Forest Credit Integrity Guidance.
Global Canopy released its first full Deforestation Action Tracker findings that assessed 713 financial institutions with high-profile climate commitments on their action to eliminate deforestation, conversion and associated human rights abuses from their portfolios. Overall, it shows that deforestation policies are all too frequently missing. While there is a slight increase on the baseline from 2022, three-quarters (536) of the financial institutions assessed still do not have a deforestation policy, and just 10% (69) have a deforestation policy for all highest-risk commodities. Read more about Nature-based Insights’ work with Global Canopy.
Agriculture
The University of Oxford’s Future of Food programme launched an open-source database that tracks large food corporations, including how they invest in and work with alternative proteins.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation launched a new roadmap for Paris-compliant food production.
Regen10 released its Zero Draft Outcomes-Based Framework. The report outlines the work Regen10 is undertaking to develop a farmer-centric, outcomes-based framework that supports the transition to regenerative global food systems. When complete, the framework will provide a holistic set of outcomes, indicators and metrics to understand and measure change over time on farms and across landscapes.
A collaboration of farmer networks published an analysis of international public climate finance flows to sustainable agriculture and family farmers, finding these farmers produce a third of the world’s food but get just 0.3% of climate finance.
More than 16 philanthropic organisations, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s climate fund, will focus more on transforming food systems, according to a statement of action signed at COP28. The Bezos Earth Fund and other groups will invest more in food security and sustainability to drive climate action in line with the Paris Agreement goals. This follows an announcement earlier in 2023 for the fund to support remote sensing with access to satellite data.
Finance
The Business & Philanthropy Climate Forum saw three organisations – the Green Climate Fund, Allied Climate Partners, and Allianz Global Investors – agree to mobilise $5 billion in philanthropic, public and private funding to unlock long-term capital of $20 billion to advance climate and nature action.
ICLEI shared a biodiversity and nature financing toolkit for cities and regional governments to access funds for Nature-based Solutions within their territories easily.
The World Economic Forum launched a new guide covering some of how companies could support value creation through the use of biodiversity credits. Specifically, this report identifies a set of interrelated use cases for biodiversity credits: to enhance carbon credits for nature.
VCMI, Science Based Targets initiative, GHG Protocol and The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) will come together to establish an End-to-End Integrity Framework that provides consistent guidance on decarbonisation, which includes the use of offsets for residual emissions.
The world’s six leading independent carbon crediting standards – ACR, ART, Climate Action Reserve, Global Carbon Council, Gold Standard and Verra – announced a collaboration to increase the impact of activities under their standards. The collaboration aims to enhance transparency and consistency across the market.
IETA released its Evolution of the Carbon Markets report, which looks at how compliance markets, project-based approaches, and the voluntary market have all changed and need to change to meet the challenge of a net-zero future.
Together with leading environmental NGOs, We Mean Business Coalition has signed an open letter to COP28 leaders calling for increased private sector investment in high-integrity Carbon Markets.
14 December 2023
