Nature @ C0P27 Daily Brief – Nov. 8

DAY 1

The first day of COP kicked off with a no-holds-barred speech from the UN Secretary-General, who said the world was on a “highway to climate hell.” “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a climate solidarity pact — or a collective suicide pact,” he said. During the World Leaders Summit, many leaders repeated the Egyptian Presidency’s call for ‘Implementation, Implementation, Implementation,” although while many acknowledged the importance of climate cooperation, generally announcements fell short of demonstrating concrete progress on the delivery of commitments. Headline-grabbing announcements were scarce. The launch of the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership was one bright spot as a group of leaders agreed to focus on the delivery and accountability of past forest pledges. In today’s issue, we’ll focus on some of the key headline announcements from Day 1, returning tomorrow to broader coverage of updates, reports and nature-positive activity in Sharm.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking at the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Summit

Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership

The Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) was launched yesterday by world leaders, including UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Akufo-Addo of Ghana, President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, President Petro of Colombia, Chancellor Scholz of Germany, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The FCLP is a voluntary partnership of 26 countries committed to accelerating momentum to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. The partnership aims to drive delivery and accountability to global forest commitments through annual high-level events. It will also provide a space for governments to innovate, and problem-solve to create collective consensus about how to drive progress towards the 2030 target.

Co-chaired by the US and Ghana, member countries will commit to being a leader in at least one of the FCLP’s action areas. Within each action area, the FCLP will support, lead, establish or showcase, as appropriate, one or more initiatives as the principal mechanism to scale and drive delivery.

Action areas: 1/ International collaboration on the sustainable land use economy and supply chains; 2/ Mobilising public and donor finance to support implementation; 3/ Shifting the private finance system; 4/ Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ initiatives; 5/Strengthening and scaling carbon markets for forests; 6/ Partnerships and incentives for preserving high-integrity forests.

ANNOUNCEMENTS AT FPLC EVENT AT COP27

• At COP27, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership held its first public-facing event. An alliance of government leaders, companies, financial actors and Indigenous Peoples’ came together to demonstrate delivery and ambition to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
• Public Finance :$12 billion of public money committed in Glasgow over 5 years; $2.67 billion spent in 2021 (22%); 1 billion EUR additional public money committed at COP27.

Progress on COP26 Commitments

• At COP26, 12 governments came together to make the Global Forest Finance Pledge for $12 billion of forest-related finance by 2025. $2.67 billion of this $12 billion pledge was spent in the first year. This equates to 22% of the COP26 pledge and means that donors are on track to deliver by 2025, translating headline commitments into action on the ground. This includes $717 million in Africa; $452 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; and, $239 million in Asia.
• At COP26, donors committed $1.5 billion to the Congo Basin over 5 years through the Congo Basin Joint Donor Statement. At COP27, those donors reported that they had provided $508 million support for forest and people in the Congo Basin. The scale of this investment reflects the importance of the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world for sustainable development, climate mitigation and for adaptation.
• At COP26, donors committed $1.7 billion through the Indigenous People and Local Communities Forest Tenure Pledge. At COP27, those donors reported that $321 million of finance has been disbursed from the pledge. The pledge responds to long-standing demands from Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and civil society for increased climate finance to support IPs’ and LCs’ critical role as guardians of forests and nature.
• President Macron announced that the coalition of donors behind the Great Green Wall Accelerator initiative have spent $2.5 billion since The One Planet Summit in 2021. The GGW initiative is driving investment to restore 393 million hectares of degraded land that has the restoration potential, if conserved, managed, and restored to lead to net carbon sequestration of between 1.5 and 3.5 GtCO2 equivalent.

New Commitments

• Germany doubled its finance for forests from €1 billion to €2 billion through 2025.
• Private Finance: In addition to $7.2 billion of private funds committed in Glasgow; an additional $3.6 billion of private capital will be committed at COP27.

Progress on COP26 Commitments

• One year after launch, IFACC commitments have risen from $3 billion to $4.2 billion [an increase of $1.2 billion] and the initiative now comprises 13 financial institutions and agribusiness companies.
• The Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition increased the total amount of finance mobilised for the purchase of high-integrity emissions reduction credits to over USD $1.5 billion. This represents a 100% increase in financial commitments from the private sector since COP26.
• Volkswagen Group and H&M Group have become the latest global corporations to make a financial commitment to the LEAF Coalition.
• The Republic of Korea has been unveiled as the first Asian government to provide financial support to LEAF.
• The Republic of Korea joins the governments of the UK, US and Norway in backing the Coalition.
• In addition, Ecuador has become the first forest nation to sign a LEAF memorandum of agreement. This sets out next steps and a clear roadmap for the signing of binding Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreements by April 2023.

New Commitments

• The establishment of a new collaborative of philanthropic donors, Forests, People, Climate (FPC), was announced. Its aim is to mobilise and deploy significantly increased philanthropic funding in support of the Glasgow Leaders Declaration’s goal. $400 million over five years in new philanthropic funding was committed to the FPC with a goal of raising another $1.2 billion over the next five years. These new commitments go beyond the $380 million over five years that the thirteen donors currently involved in the collaboration already planned to spend toward the FPC goal.
• The Dutch entrepreneurial development bank (FMO) committed to investing at least EUR 500 million by 2030 in sustainable forestry.
• &Green committed up to $88 million of additional resources to build a portfolio of investible projects in the Congo basin.
• Southbridge Investments has developed a major new partnership, The African Restoration Fund, with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), blending $500 million of concessional finance with $1.5 private investment to support local restoration efforts across the continent, starting with mangrove restoration.
• The Bezos Earth Fund announced a contribution of $50 million to efforts to increase restoration in Africa.

Systemic Shifts

• Leading financial institutions from Japan to Norway to Brazil, all signatories to the Financial Sector Commitment on Eliminating Commodity-driven Deforestation have been moving forward with implementation through the Finance Sector Deforestation Action (FSDA) initiative.
• FSDA members have published shared investor expectations for companies, are stepping up engagement activity and are working with policymakers and data providers. New members joining in 2022 include SouthBridge Group, the first African financial institution to join the initiative, Banco Estado de Chile, London CIV and GAM Investments.
• In their call to action, the GFANZ co-chairs and vice chair, including Mark Carney, are calling on all financial institutions to embed deforestation into their net zero transition plans.
• Central Bank Governors from Chile, Zambia and Malaysia highlighted the vital steps they are taking to better understand nature-related climate risks, ensuring that the protection and restoration of critical ecosystems are properly accounted for in ensuring financial stability and contributing to economic prosperity.
• The 28 Governments participating in the Forest, Agriculture and Commodities (FACT) Dialogue, representing over 75% of global trade in key commodities presented the FACT Dialogue Progress Report that renews the commitments of the largest producer and consumer countries to working together to achieve shared goals and promote sustainable development and trader, while protecting forests and other critical ecosystems.

NEW SUPPORT FOR 30X30

On the first day of COP27, presidents and ministers from Palau, Nigeria, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States affirmed their support for the 30×30 target which commits countries to a global effort to achieve the protection of at least thirty per cent of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030 to help curb biodiversity loss and climate change.

The President of Palau, Surangel S. Whipps Jr, announced that Palau has joined the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, an intergovernmental group championing the protection of at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. Engineer H. Musa, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Environment and Climate Change from the Federal Republic of Nigeria announced that all 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had agreed to support 30×30 as part of an “ECOWAS Appeal for an Ambitious Global Response to the Biodiversity Crisis”.

All the leaders at the event expressed their determination to get a global agreement for 30×30 at the upcoming COP15, the Convention on Biological Diversity summit to be held in Montreal in December, and affirmed their ambition to achieve 30×30 targets together. These commitments follow last year’s largest-ever private funding commitment for biodiversity conservation aimed at tackling the Earth’s climate, extinction and health crises. In 2021, nine organizations joined together to pledge $5 billion over the next 10 years to support the creation, expansion, management and monitoring of protected and conserved areas of land, inland water and sea.

Drought Resilience, Great Blue Wall and Arctic Sea Ice

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