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Info Service on Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Nov23/05) La Paz, 7 Nov (Mirna Ines Fernandez Pradel*) — The Final Intergovernmental Consultations on Nature-based Solutions (NbS), hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), took place in Nairobi on 9-13 October 2023. They, however, did little to allay the concerns and skepticism around the controversial concept. [The intergovernmental consultations comprised both regional and global consultations and followed a global meeting carried out virtually in May, and a series of regional consultations over June and July, carried out virtually with each of the UN regions.] NbS were defined multilaterally for the first time at the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2), held in February 2022 in Nairobi, as “actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well- being, ecosystem services, resilience and biodiversity benefits”. This definition is part of UNEA resolution 5/5, entitled “Nature-based solutions for supporting sustainable development”, which also gave UNEP the mandate to convene intergovernmental consultations on NbS. The resolution also set out three specific tasks for the consultations, which in summary are to: (a) Compile examples of best practice in nature-based solutions; (b) Assess existing and discuss potential new proposals, criteria, standards and guidelines to address divergences, with a view to achieving a common understanding among Member States for the implementation of nature-based solutions; and (c) Identify options for supporting sustainable investment in nature-based solutions. In October 2022, Dr. Leila Benali, President of the UNEA, appointed H. E. Mrs. Giovanna Valverde Stark, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to UNEP and UN-Habitat, and Ms. Sikeade Egbuwalo, Senior Forest Officer, Ministry of Environment of Nigeria and Nigerian national focal point to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as Co-Chairs of the intergovernmental consultations. The secretariat supporting the Co-Chairs in this process is hosted at UNEP in Nairobi. The first round of consultations, held virtually between May and July 2023, gathered several countries and stakeholder representatives to provide insights on the three tasks that were set out in the UNEA mandate. There were diverse opinions and insights about each of the three topics and it was expected that these would be well captured in the Co-Chairs’ summaries, which were also meant to take into account the different submissions provided by Member States and stakeholders. After the virtual consultations, the Co-Chairs considered that, in addition to the three tasks defined in the UNEA mandate for the intergovernmental consultations, three other issues had also emerged clearly: (a) Opportunities and obstacles: NbS and climate mitigation; (b) Policy for NbS; and ( c) Measuring benefits and costs of NbS. The Nairobi consultations were structured in such a way that panel discussions were followed by consultations on each of the six proposed topics, and stakeholders would only be able to make interventions after Member States, if time allowed, which was not always the case. The first two days of the consultations (9-10 October) comprised panel discussions, regional consultations and a case study site visit of Urban NbS within the UN Compound. The last three days (11-13 October) had a session of plenary feedback on the regional consultations, panel discussions and global consultations to review the Co- Chairs’ Recommendations for Supporting the Implementation of Nature-based Solutions. With a very packed agenda, there was little time to discuss the Member States’ perspectives on the outcomes of these consultations and how future multilateral discussions on NbS, if any, should be carried out. The Co-Chairs emphasized several times that these were consultations, not negotiations. Therefore, the aim of the discussions was not to reach consensus but to ensure that the breadth of opinion finds expression in the consultations. Nevertheless, some Member States expressed concerns regarding the fidelity of the Co-Chairs’ summary of these consultations to the variety of insights expressed, since the summaries of the earlier virtual global and regional consultations, in their view, overemphasized the positive aspects of NbS and minimized the concerns about the misuse of the concept and impacts on rights holders such as indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), farmers, women and youth. NbS have been implemented by different actors, especially by the private sector, for many years already. The lack of a multilaterally agreed concept, guidelines for implementation and strict, binding environmental and social safeguards has been exploited extensively to misuse NbS as a tool for companies to offset their carbon emissions and “greenwash” their image, and for polluters to avoid their historical responsibility towards developing countries and rights holders. Several Member States and stakeholder representatives raised concerns related to this kind of misuse of the NbS concept and expressed skepticism about the potential of this approach to address biodiversity loss and climate change without repeating the same mistakes that approaches such as REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) and carbon offsets have made. The concept of NbS has gained a lot of traction and financing in the last few years, but they were hopeful that the concerns expressed in these consultations would be reflected properly in the outcome documents. On the topic of best practices, several Member States were of the view that considering bad practices and maladaptation was as important as identifying good practices. Cameroon, supported by Burkina Faso and Senegal, stressed the need to have specific evaluation criteria to avoid “greenwashing”, since otherwise it would not be possible to know which are good practices and which ones are bad. With regards to standards and criteria, the main proposal on the table was the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Standard on NbS, which has defined criteria for the implementation of NbS. Several Member States expressed concerns about this becoming the multilaterally agreed standard for the implementation of NbS for different reasons. Brazil pointed out a timing problem, since the IUCN Standard was developed years before NbS were defined at UNEA and therefore would not necessarily be relevant. Other Member States raised the concern that they do not take part in the IUCN processes and were not involved in the development of the Standard, while some rights holders expressed concerns about the accessibility of the IUCN decision-making processes for civil society. Barbados stressed the need for flexibility with local stakeholders as IPLCs who cannot generate specific data, and how this becomes a barrier for them to access funds. In their interventions, IUCN reiterated the importance of “net gain” to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity as one of their criterions, whereas several stakeholders were sceptical of “net” approaches as these are usually misused for offsetting and avoidance of the responsibilities for cutting carbon emissions and ecosystem- degrading activities. Some Member States proposed different approaches to the standards and criteria, for example, to use guidelines along the lines of the Escazu agreement on access to information, participation and justice, which was a proposal from Chile. On finance, different Member States and stakeholders made references to the barriers to access finance that a complex set of criteria would impose on implementers on the ground, and the need to simplify accessibility for rights holders and developing countries. At the finance panel, the World Bank presented results on an assessment they performed on the investments that have been made in NbS already, and these sum up to millions of dollars. However, it remains uncertain how much of these investments directly support community-based solutions and how much funding remains to invest in ecosystem-based approaches, as the other option for countries to implement in the decisions of the CBD and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). [In 2022, CBD Parties adopted a compromise formulation that is now used in multiple documents, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: “nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches”. The UNFCCC’s Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan uses the phrase “nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches”. Both provide flexibility to the respective Parties to use either NbS or ecosystem- based approaches at the national level.] Some Member States such as Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina expressed concerns about the misuse of the NbS concept for climate mitigation through offsetting practices. They requested the proposed topic on “Opportunities and obstacles: NbS and climate mitigation” be removed from the consultations, as this was not part of the UNEA mandate but especially because climate mitigation action is under the purview of its own legally-binding treaty, the UNFCCC. Their request was not taken into account and the consultations on the proposed topic around climate mitigation proceeded. Nonetheless, many other Member States, such as South Africa and Cuba, also remained critical of offsets, uncertain of the benefits of having a climate mitigation focus for ecosystems. When it comes to policies, some Member States expressed that their countries have been aligning other nature- related policies to the NbS framework and reorganizing related policies under the umbrella of NbS, but others still need the appropriate and coherent policies at the national level. Some Member States have been working on the development of national level NbS policies and incorporating NbS into specific policies such as national climate change adaptation measures and their National Biodiversity Strategies and Actions Plans (NBSAPs). Other Member States highlighted that NbS do not fit into their national climate and biodiversity policies, and expressed concerns on how they would be expected to report their climate and biodiversity actions, if the focus for reporting shifts to NbS. Some Member States further stressed the difficulty in considering an economic or market cost-benefit logic of NbS or nature in general, since this would ignore the intrinsic values that nature has. Member States and stakeholder representatives also highlighted that it is essential to have a differential approach when assessing cost and benefits, and the impact on women and indigenous peoples must be considered as a differentiating factor when designing and financing investments. On the last day of the global consultations, the Co-Chairs released a set of recommendations for the implementation of NbS, but many Member States felt that these recommendations did not properly reflect the substance of the discussions. There was time allocated to gather the opinions of Member States and stakeholders about this document, but some Member States made it clear that since this was not an agreed outcome, the document should be considered solely as the opinion of the Co-Chairs. The Co-chairs’ summary, which should be a more extensive document covering all the discussions that took place in the consultations, will be made available in the second week of November. This outcome document will be presented to UNEA 6 in the form of an information document and will not be subject to review by Member States. As the outcomes of the consultations are not agreed multilaterally, questions arise on whether the document should be the basis for any further work in treaty fora such as the CBD. The intergovernmental consultations showed clearly that the controversy over NbS has not yet been resolved. These concerns were reflected in discussions on climate change and biodiversity at the 25th meeting of the CBD’s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSSTA-25), which was held in Nairobi the following week. (* With inputs from Lim Li Ching.) +
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