We need to quickly get to a place where people who don’t care about climate change, or don’t give a damn about nature, are nonetheless making good decisions

Reporting from COP23, Bonn— There are so many statistics flying about at this meeting it can be hard to keep them any in mind. But two figures that keep coming up: 30% and 2%. 30% is how far we could get towards meeting the Paris mitigation targets IF we look after of our lands, if we sustainably and equitably restore and protect natural environments all over the globe. 2% is roughly how much development funding gets channeled towards the stewardship of nature, towards conservation. So that’s one major disconnect that needs addressing that many are talking about.

Another is that between funding for mitigation vs. adaptation.  In the Paris Agreement, there is now parity between mitigation and adaptation goals - they are deeply interwoven. Yet, only 5% of climate finance gets directed towards adaptation. 

So, in short: we need more funding for adaptation and we need to make sure a larger proportion of it targets the natural world. 

How do we do this? 

Well, to shift the distribution of investment so that it better reflects the debt we owe to nature is going to take much better engagement with the private sector.  This has been a major theme emerging this week. But I was surprised to learn that the new Adaptation Gap Report just launched by UNEP doesn't refer to commerce, and barely mentions trade. This is despite major impacts of PS on resilience and their fundamental interest in reducing risk, and despite the potentially game changing development that is the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure about which we all need to know a lot more.

More encouraging has been the number and quality of sessions being held as part of IIED’s Climate and Development day - good representation from the private sector here, and real efforts being made to forge new public-private partnerships to build resilience. 

What keeps being highlighted is the potentially important route to mobilising climate finance via the insurance sector.  Which brings me to my final statistic: $625M - that’s how much property damage was avoided in NE USA during Hurricane Sandy thanks to natural coastal wetlands. And there are a growing number of scientifically robust studies from tropical and temperate regions alike showing the cost-effectiveness of nature-based approaches for dealing with the consequences of CC.  In other words, it’s now clear that if we adopt NBS we will close the adaptation funding gap much more quickly.

This was something echoed by the high level panel yesterday afternoon where delegates from the Maldives, Papua New Guinea, British Virgin Islands, Sao Tome and others at the frontline of climate change all endorsed the need for EbA to become the norm, to become mainstreamed into the UNFCCC process as well as business practice.

In the words of the Minister for Environment and Energy from the Maldives: "we must raise ambition for ecosystems in our climate policy, not only for humans but for all of nature”. 

Or, put another way, in the words of another colleague, and possibly the best thing I’ve heard at COP23 “we quickly need to get to a place where people who don’t care about climate or resilience, or don’t give a damn about nature, are making good decisions”.

Nature is at last getting traction on the global climate stage - but is this purely an echo-chamber?

Observations on week 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties 23, Bonn, Germany

“To get anywhere close to delivering on the Paris Agreement needs nothing short of a global transformation in which the economy is built not on destruction of natural resources but careful stewardship of biodiversity and ecosystem services." Johan Rockstrom at COP23

I’ve been attending various side events over the past three days and I’ve been encouraged by the number of events with a nature theme, in particular on the role of forests in climate change mitigation or adaptation. 

There are a number of studies now indicating that over 30% of the mitigation goal could be reached by restoring and maintaining our natural forests, and that those forests can confer resilience on humans, and help us adapt to the effects of climate change. 

There’s a sense that the message is finally getting through that we cannot deliver on the Paris Agreement without massively scaling up the restoration and protection of natural habitats. And indeed, over 60% of ratifying countries commit to nature-based actions in one way or another.

I have also been encouraged by presence and the power of the indigenous voice. Yesterday, I went to a session on indigenous people and the climate pledges of Paris Agreement signatories (the so-called "Nationally Determined Contributions".  Amazonia is incredibly important for global climate and resilience; we lose Amazonia, we lose the fight against climate change. But the interesting thing about Amazonia is the >30% falls within indigenous territories, and rates of deforestation within those territories is an order of magnitude slower than outside. So to really raise ambition on Paris, indigenous people need to be central to the design and implementation of climate policy across the globe.

The message that nature-based solutions are important is being loudly trumpeted in the "Bonn Zone" where all the NGOs are gathered. But this zone could be described as the echo chamber. The sense I get is that over there, in the "Bula Zone", where the negotiations are taking place, there is mainly silence on the issue. This needs to change.