Nature @ C0P27 Daily Brief – Nov. 7

COP 27 is finally here and in addition to an exciting events schedule and news coming out of the Nature Zone and Nature’s Newsroom, we are keeping our eyes and ears out for anything nature related inside the Blue Zone. Our Daily Nature Brief at COP27 will be coming out every morning from 7-18 November with an inside scoop into the most important climate conference of the year. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive the brief directly in your email.

Here is what we’ve heard on day 1:

Forest and Climate Leaders’ Summit

As 30,000 people descend on Sharm, you’ll hear a number of buzzwords bouncing throughout the venue’s many, many, many corridors: finance, loss and damage (now an agenda item!), adaptation, ambition, Article 6, all among them. As always, Carbon Brief provides excellent analysis, as does TNC. For us, we’re focusing on the nature agenda, which in one way or another touches on all those broader topics. FOLU’s Morgan Gillespy did a nice curtain raiser of what to keep an eye on with the forest agenda. We’re looking forward to the Forest and Leaders’ Climate Summit this evening, where a group of world leaders, including the UK Prime Minister, will launch the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership to focus on the delivery and accountability of previous climate pledges. At that event, at 17.00 local time, a broader group of stakeholders will report on progress since COP26. We’ll provide a full breakdown of the announcements in tomorrow’s issue.

N4C Launches Expanded 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 public policy database that facilitates 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.

N4C At COP27

THE 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 live stream on Nature4Climate’s YouTube channel.

The Nature Zone kicked off yesterday with a workshop that brought together all Nature Zone collaborators and allies, including Johan Rockström and Manuel Pulgar Vidal, to align on our shared vision to create a Nature Positive future. This was followed by an evening session celebrating African ministerial leadership toward a Nature Positive Net-Zero Future

The Nature Zone is co-sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, Bloomberg Philanthropies, National Geographic Society, The Climate Pledge, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society, BirdLife International, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, Restor, Trillion Trees, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, American Forests, WWF International, the World Resources Institute and the Global Evergreening Alliance.

If you’re on the ground, 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 starting Tuesday. There will be a Nature Positive show going live 10.30 am local time each day, as well as interviews from partners including Eurovision and We Don’t Have Time. For daily content from the Newsroom, please go to the Trello board, where we will upload the best of our content each day.

COP27 CALLS TO ACTION

Alongside efforts to rapidly accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions:
• Investors must stop investing in the conversion of intact ecosystems, especially deforestation, and businesses that deplete nature, and start funding high-integrity Nature-based Solutions.
• Companies must commit to science-based targets for climate and nature and disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature throughout their value chains.
• Governments must deliver an ambitious global framework and action agenda for biodiversity at the upcoming Convention on Biodiversity (COP15) and fully recognise nature’s role as a key climate solution in the formal outcome of COP27.
• Investors, companies, governments and civil society must work together with great urgency to reduce and reverse the socio-economic drivers and pressures causing nature’s decline and rising greenhouse gas emissions while recognising the common but differentiated responsibilities of different peoples.

INSIDER TIPS FOR COP INCOMERS

• Bring your own sustenance, especially water. In the words of one insider “snacks, snacks, snacks”
• If you find a toilet, remember where it is 
• If you have a cartographer friend, bring her or him with you. Seriously though, leave yourself extra time as it is a large and hard to navigate venue 
• Wifi was spotty on Day 1, but insiders found strong signals by the Egyptian pavilion 
• Buy a sim card at the airport. Vodafone is providing free ones, but expect long queues and note they are only 10GB
• Make sure to have cash (US dollars widely accepted)
• Be prepared for longer journeys on shuttle buses
• Early reports are good coffee at the Food Systems Pavilion 

SOCIAL MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

Some ‘firsts’ occurring at COP27: The inclusion of Loss & Damage in the formal negotiations and the first food-focused pavilions and events at a COP.