Joint Partner Statement: Fighting the Climate Crisis requires addressing Biodiversity Loss

Biodiversity, at the level of ecosystems, species and genes, forms the foundation of the Earth’s life support systems and provides the services that underpin human lives and prosperity. Our social and economic well-being depends on biodiversity, as does our future.

Action to limit climate change and protect nature needs to be urgent and must go hand in hand. The window of opportunity is closing fast. We, a group of biodiversity and climate justice actors offer this Joint Statement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP28. We invite other like-minded organisations, groups and bodies to join us in our commitments and actions to address the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss at this vital time.

As joint actors dedicated to addressing biodiversity loss and nature protection, we, therefore, recognise and support that:

Solutions to the biodiversity crisis are linked to addressing the climate crisis and should be tackled together to achieve successful outcomes. “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. LS139”

We call on Nations to take up their responsibility and develop ambitious National Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) ahead of COP16. We need robust nature restoration laws to make large-scale nature restoration that will improve societies’ resilience in the face of climate crisis impacts such as droughts, food insecurity, flooding and forest fires, and will contribute to mitigating climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere.

We as joint actors calling for the protection of our common home are calling for the following:

1. We demand that countries progressively phase out Fossil Fuels through the implementation of policies that provide avenues for just energy transition for all at COP28.

2. We call for the continued inclusion of Indigenous and local action who are at the heart of sustainable development to achieve the commitments of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

3. We call on leaders to develop projects, business models and/or financing instruments to support economic activity that seeks to reverse the drivers of nature loss and promote the protection, restoration and sustainable use of nature and its services to people.

4. We need to increase financing, especially for the global South Nations, which bear the brunt of the climate crisis. There should be increased funding to help in protecting nature.

5. We need decisive and concerted action to phase out fossil fuels and shift to 100% renewable energy systems which require important investments in grid infrastructure and sustainable supply chains.

6. We invite Governments, Investors, and Supporters from across the world to work with and support all stakeholders to unlock their full capability in addressing the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss in order to meet Target 3; protection of 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water and coastal and marine areas.

7. We also call for all of humankind to redefine our relationship with nature ensuring that we safeguard, restore and sustainably manage our common home.