COP28 Daily Wrap-up (Dec 8) – Youth Day Perspectives

Briefing Room 09.12.23

Posted by Nature4Climate
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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

Announcements 

Forests Declaration Assessment and Systems Change Lab launched a new Glasgow Leaders Declaration Dashboard monitoring collective progress amongst signatories made across the six articles of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use.

WWF published a new report – Breaking Silos: Enhancing Synergies between NDCs and NBSAPs – that identifies a number of entry points to ensure that policy planning and implementation processes work together to deliver for climate, nature, and people. The report reinforces calls for COP28 to be the moment when nature is truly brought into the climate process through the Global Stocktake outcome and the establishment of a dedicated nature-climate work stream at future COPs.

The 10 Point Plan initiative, a coalition of more than 40 countries highlighting the critical urgency of closing the biodiversity financing gap, released an infographic on financing trends for biodiversity. The infographic shows the world faces a US$ 700 billion annual financing gap to fill by 2030.

Over 800 signatories and counting from across business, finance, philanthropy, politics, academia and civil society joined forces to call on Sultan Al Jaber and all Parties to deliver a 1.5C aligned outcome in response to the Global Stocktake – because later is too late.

The COP28 Presidency, High Level Champions, UNEP, ICLEI, the World Bank and Global Commons Alliance made a call for cities and regions to advance nature-positive urban development, led by H.E. Razan al Mubarak. First, cities should integrate nature into their climate transition plans. Second, we urge cities to report their commitments to the CBD recognized CitiesWithNature Action Platform. Third, cities should set science-based targets for nature and climate.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare published a report highlighting the overlooked role of wildlife conservation and ecosystem protection in addressing the climate crisis. Wildlife Conservation and Ecosystem Protection: Missed opportunities for climate action in Africa and the LDCs analyzes the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of African countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to understand the extent to which wildlife conservation is being considered in the climate action plans of countries that are host to major wild animal populations.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM for Climate) initiative, co-led by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, has more than doubled the value of its partners’ investments in climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation in the past year – from $8 billion announced at COP27 to over $17 billion at COP28.

Forests & Finance published a new report on banks financing deforestation and biodiversity loss mapping commercial financial flows attributable to the forest-risk commodity sectors driving the majority of tropical deforestation.

WWF and IKEA have extended their 20-year collaboration to include new projects in Colombia and Brazil, which aim to safeguard biodiversity and landscapes while also empowering local communities and curbing the alarming loss of forests.

Mato Grosso took an important step toward selling carbon credits on the international market, presenting a concept note  to the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) for participation in the TREES Standard.

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