Welcome to Nature Day at COP28. Buckle up for a flurry of announcements, report launches and, frankly, an overwhelming number of events across the Blue and Green Zones. We’ve done our best to provide you with some useful resources below, but definitely expect a bit of whiplash today. We’ll try to help you make sense of everything in upcoming issues of the brief. In particular, watch out for the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership event, updates on uniting national climate and biodiversity plans, carbon market announcements, mangrove news and important new reports, including the latest State of Finance for Nature Report from UNEP. And, if you feel a bit behind on what’s brought us to this point in Dubai, watch our video below.
Meanwhile, in the negotiations… The latest version of the Global Stocktake text dropped yesterday, and teams have been pouring over it to figure out what it all means for different areas of climate action. On nature, IFAW’s Climate Change Advisor, Simon Addison, summed it up as follows, “While it is encouraging that nature, ecosystems, and biodiversity have been recognised, and that the importance of protecting, conserving, restoring, and sustainably using them has been highlighted, the draft text fails to call on UNFCCC Parties to scale up the implementation of nature-based solutions at the rate needed to fill the gaps revealed by the Global Stocktake report.” In other words, it’s OK, could be better, but it remains to be seen if strong wording will still be there when the gavel comes down.
On the food front, it only has token references in the latest text. It’s better than the 5 December version, where it was all but absent, prompting a statement that has now been signed by more than 120 organisations. But the language drafted still ignores the whole of the food chain, from farm to fork, not just what happens in the soil.
With that, onwards and upwards. Here’s hoping for more nature by the end of the day.
COP28 Daily Wrap-up – December 8
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