N4C COP27 Daily Brief

Biodiversity Day Round Up

ENACT. The COP27 Presidency launched the Enhancing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for Climate Transformation (ENACT), in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). ENACT will serve as a hub for government and non-State actors to foster collaboration, accelerate action, facilitate policy dialogue, bring global coherence to activities, and ensure adherence to the NbS Global Standard. The initiative will “coordinate global efforts to address climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, and global biodiversity loss through NBS”. The initiative will produce an annual State of Nature-based Solutions report to update COP28 and subsequent meetings.

Call for Paris-Like Agreement at COP15. A high-level set of climate champions released a new letter urging leaders to step up action to address the accelerating loss of nature by delivering an ambitious and transformative global biodiversity agreement at COP15. The signatories include: Laurent Fabius, President of COP21, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, President of COP20 and CBD COP15 Action Agenda for Nature and People Champion, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC (2010-2016), Laurence Tubiana, France’s Climate Change Ambassador and Special Representative for COP21, and Nigel Topping, COP26 High level Climate Champion.

Call from civil society. More than 340 civil society leaders called on governments to prioritise the critical UN Biodiversity conference in Montreal and deliver an ambitious agreement that reverses nature loss by 2030.

New Survey on Nature Agenda. From analysis of over 400 experts from 90 countries, a new survey reveals that despite national governments being considered the most important actors to lead the ‘Nature Agenda’, a lack of political support, policies, and incentives are causing significant barriers to progress on nature. 88% believe the state of the world’s nature to be ‘alarming’ or ‘catastrophic and potentially irreversible’. This concern is echoed by civil society; 64% of individuals surveyed across 11 countries warn the state of nature and biodiversity across the world is ‘alarming’ or ‘catastrophic’. Very few experts believe governments (7%) or the private sector (8%) are performing well in protecting nature.

Forestry Roadmap. WBCSD released a new roadmap that shows how leading forest companies are paving the way toward a nature-positive future. 15 companies have rallied behind a shared definition of nature positive and committed to collaborative action to accelerate the transformation of the forest sector and the broader economic system in which they operate through the WBCSD's Forest Solutions Group project that developed the roadmap.

The Forest Data Partnership. The Forest Data Partnership launched a call to action for companies, public institutions and NGOs to join forces in catalyzing and operationalizing better data on the world’s land and forests. The goal of the Forest Data Partnership is to improve land use decisions, accelerate the transition to supply chain sustainability and reverse commodity-driven forest loss across the world.

Climate's Secret Ally. WWF released a new report highlighting the power of natural ecosystems to both reduce emissions and help communities adapt and build resilience in a warming world. The report draws upon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s work to highlight the interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and biodiversity loss, and makes the case for better integrating nature into the global response to the climate crisis.

UK Commitments. The UK committed £30 million of seed finance into the Big Nature Impact Fund – a new public-private fund for nature in the UK which will unlock significant private investment into nature projects, such as new tree planting or restoring peatlands. It also pledged an additional £12 million to the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance to protect and restore vulnerable coastal communities and habitats.

Pilots Digital Measuring Of Forest Carbon. Verra and Pachama announce a new digital measurement, reporting, and verification pilot for nature-based solutions, increasing the transparency, integrity, and efficiency of carbon credit issuance.

Advancing the Ocean Conservation Pledge. The Ocean Conservation Pledge is mobilizing national commitments to enhance marine conservation, a critical ocean-based solution to address the climate and biodiversity crises. During COP27, 16 countries announced their endorsement of the pledge, signaling their commitment to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of ocean waters under their jurisdictions by 2030. This is the first tranche of participants in the pledge, which includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Fiji, France, Greece, Japan, Kenya, Malta, Panama, Portugal, Romania, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka.

Expanding the Blue Carbon Inventory Project. Through its Blue Carbon Inventory Project, the U.S. NOAA has launched two new project partnerships. 1) NOAA and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center will work together to develop data tools for assessing and tracking the quantity and quality of soil and biomass blue carbon data and a user-friendly interface to enable national greenhouse gas inventory compilers’ and other stakeholders’ access to stratify and interrogate data based upon country-specific needs. 2) In September, NOAA held its first project workshop with Costa Rica to provide technical information to support its NDC and foster within-country collaboration on blue carbon.

International Tree Equity. At COP27 today, American Forests will announce plans to expand its Tree Equity Score tool to the United Kingdom in 2023, in partnership with the Woodland Trust and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH). In 2023, American Forests will also expand Tree Equity Score to cover all urban areas across the United States, as well Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Nature In The Streets. Cities in developing countries are invited to participate in the Beat the Heat: Nature for Cool Cities Challenge by pledging to increase nature based solutions in their urban areas by 2030 and demonstrate tangible progress by 2025. Participants will be supported via funding, technical assistance, partnership opportunities, and communications support.

ARTICLE 6 UPDATE

Article 6 negotiators continue to work on technical items related to how to set up the registries that will manage the trading of emission credits. The main issues revolve around Article 6.4, which establishes a centralised body to act as a registry to manage the overall system. But it cannot function until its governing guidelines are in place, and limited time remains to do this before the informal deadline for the start-up of the mechanism at the end of next year. The issues of contention appear to be how the registry will operate and the transaction procedures for trading, including the issue of authorisation of emission reductions by host countries.

What "authorisation" looks like is different from country to country dependent on their views and goals. What is desired in the Article 6 text this year is a functional system that can recognise all sinks and sources of greenhouse gas emissions so we have as large of an impact on reducing global GHG emissions as possible. This includes a strong transparency component that would allow for all emissions trading to be followed from buyer to seller, and whether the host country has authorized the unit or not. This includes emissions from all sectors - whether Natural Climate Solutions, Energy, or transportation.

NCS Alliance Lighthouses Film Series & Event

The new NCS Leaders’ film series from the NCS Alliance captures the testimonials from businesses that invest in Natural Climate Solutions carbon credits, in addition to their decarbonisation efforts. These companies have built NCS credits into the transition to net zero and they chose high-quality NCS that result in gains for nature and for people. "We hope these will inspire other businesses to take action on climate change and invest in nature on the journey towards a net-zero world," said Giulia Carbone, Director of the NCS Alliance.

Join the NCS Alliance tomorrow in the Nature Zone Pavilion at COP27 from 18:00–20:00 PM local time to learn more about what action for nature, climate and people actually look like with NCS. As COP27 winds down, this event aims to leave you with hope. You will hear from a selection of experts on Natural Climate Solutions including representatives from the new NCS Lighthouses which demonstrate climate actions that get actual results for nature and for people. Find out about the projects which shine a light on best practice at the event tomorrow.

N4C AT COP

Nature Zone

The Nature Zone pavilion is a dedicated space at COP27 to bring to life the momentum, action, and impact that surrounds Nature Positive – the global goal to immediately halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. All events will be open for everyone to attend unless otherwise stated. Those not able to attend in person can watch the livestream on Nature4Climate’s YouTube channel.

Full schedule can be found our new website!

If you're on the ground, come find us in Zone C. Here's a helpful map, in case, like us, you find yourself hopelessly lost.

Nature's Newsroom

Nature’s Newsroom is a bespoke broadcast studio within the Nature Zone which will be sharing nature positive stories via video content captured at COP27. The Newsroom will broadcast live from its studio daily. There will be a Nature Positive show going live 10.30am local time each day, as well as interviews from partners including Eurovision and We Don't Have Time. For daily content from from the Newsroom, please go to the Trello board, where we will upload the best of our content each day.

N4C COMMITMENT TRACKER

Nature4Climate has developed a “NBS commitment tracker” – an evaluation of progress on joint action commitments that have been made on nature-based solutions from 2019 to 2022. The tracker shows some good progress across a number of different initiatives and commitments, but also that there is much more to do. Overall it tracks 80 commitments so far, and finds that 55% demonstrate substantial signs of progress or completion, while 45% show only small signs of progress, or no progress at all.

N4C POLICY TRACKER

Nature4Climate and our partners Metabolic have updated and expanded the database for the NbS Policy Tracker, launched in 2021 at COP26. The NbS Policy Tracker is the world’s largest global database of public policies that facilitate the delivery of crucial NbS solutions. This includes legislation (laws or constitutions), subsidies, and strategies and plans with budgets. In addition to these policies, the database now also includes NbS in international commitments, such as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).

The nature-based policies identified—both last year and this year—will be available on the new N4C website and further integrated into N4C’s upcoming naturebase platform.

NATUREBASE

Nature4Climate is developing a new online platform to help decision makers put Natural Climate Solutions into action: naturebase. The tool will deliver information grounded in science, lighting up pathways to protect, manage, and restore nature for measurable climate benefits. Users will be able to explore and compare target areas across forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands, while considering issues such as land tenure, opportunity cost, financing opportunities, and enabling conditions at global, regional, national and local level, as well as discover new case studies. Chris Zganjar, lead scientist is at the NatureZone until this Friday answering questions and presenting a prototype of the platform, set to launch at COP 28. To learn more, visit www.naturebase.org

CASE STUDY MAPPER

N4C is compiling case studies that highlight action on the ground, and we’re proud to present our NBS Case Study map. This is a product of a collaborative effort to enhance knowledge and to bring to the surface the development of nature-based solutions in countries around the world. The projects showcased in this index are not exhaustive, and we understand that there are many more excellent examples that were not included in this list. Really, this is just the start; the result of the first step in the journey to crowdsource case studies from around the world.

The map and underlying index will continue to be updated and improved continuously throughout the coming days, weeks and months. It currently does not comprehensively assess levels of implementation and impacts on the ground, instead, it provides a first overview of what and where climate action linked to NbS is taking place.

Biodiversity Day Round Up

ARTICLE 6 UPDATE

NCS Alliance Lighthouses Film Series & Event

N4C AT COP

NBS IN THE NEWS

N4C TOOLS AND RESOURCES

N4C COMMITMENT TRACKER