A new key biodiversity platform for cross sectoral collaboration
For its inaugural launch, World Biodiversity Summit will help define what world leaders and the private sector in biodiversity and climate action need to do in the medium and long term to achieve sustainable development and hinder further biodiversity loss, focusing on partnerships and investment mechanisms as levers of progress. World Biodiversity Summit is a platform for responding to accelerating biodiversity loss, by using the Paris Agreement as a framework to learn from, promoting relevant solutions, innovations, and leadership networks, strengthening nature restoration and conservation. Nature-based solutions will be highlighted, from specificecosystems to global possibilities.
SPEAKERS
SPEAKERS
SPEAKERS
21 September 2023
SECOND, New York, USA
Alongside UNGA 78 & Climate Week NYC
Creating Pathways for
Nature-Positive Investments
Returning for its third year, World Biodiversity Summit offers a platform to facilitate solution-oriented partnerships to convert biodiversity protection goals into concrete actions guided by the Kunming – Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
World Biodiversity Summit has grown since its inaugural year to become a leading platform tackling the most pressing issues in biodiversity and climate. Its agenda is tailored towards maximising impact by bringing together key stakeholders from across the global biodiversity arena to share best practices and develop productive cross-sector partnerships.
World Biodiversity Summit measures impact through three indicators: Global, Sectoral and Organisational.
Until the world reaches its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions or protecting biodiversity, businesses need to do everything they can to avert more intense, irreversible climate and ecosystem meltdown. With the World Climate Foundation and through the World Biodiversity Summit, we are committed to work with partners and clients to change the game, plan transitions and disrupt existing industries.
Jean-Baptiste Perrin, Invent for Society Global Leader, Capgemini Invent
Global Impact
World Biodiversity Summit facilitates cross-sectoral collaboration to spur investment in Nature-based Solutions and close the nature finance gap.
The Summit supports mitigation and adaptation to climate change through ecosystem restoration worldwide. The platform connects its members to global policies and guides them to successfully achieve global frameworks such as the Kunming – Montreal Framework for biodiversity
Sectoral Impact
World Biodiversity Summit works closely with the key sectors impacting nature and biodiversity. The Summit seeks and promotes the best practices across the most nature-impactful areas (such as forestry, agriculture and the water systems) in order to identify and scale up nature positive businesses opportunities while achieving the policies and global frameworks.
Different sectors of the economy (businesses, financiers, development banks and public institutions among others) benefit from the World Biodiversity Summit insights of nature-related risks, reporting measurements and opportunities, guiding them in the transition to a nature positive economy. World Biodiversity Summit also facilitates the necessary cross-sector conversation around the required paradigm shift in our consumption patterns and the need for nature-driven policy and financial systems.
Organisational Impact
Working together with businesses, asset managers, asset owners, governments and civil society around the world, World Biodiversity Summit facilitates organisation-driven positive impact on nature.
By aligning different organisations across sectors with the global frameworks and existing nature partnerships, the summit aims to enhance biodiversity globally and to support Nature-based Solutions that can address both Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss, as well as create jobs.
As we gear up to COP28, let us work together for a significant nature outcome focusing on conserving what we have, restoring what we have degraded, and have the ambition and courage to alter our food systems that have significant impact on our nature and greenhouse gas emissions.
H.E. Razan Al Mubarak, UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28
Key Conclusions
World Biodiversity Summit catalyses ambitious pledges and best-case practices from its partners and speakers. During the Summits, we are delighted to act as a platform for our partners’ strong and impactful nature commitments.
2023
Business Action for Nature – A Growing Imperative: The interdependence of business on nature was underscored throughout the sessions of the day, highlighting nature conservation as an emergent priority for the business sector. As articulated by H.E. Razan Al Mubarak, the UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28, the economic implications of biodiversity loss are stark and a nature-positive economy has the potential to create 400 million jobs.
Leading up to COP28, the Climate Champions team is calling to non-state actors to put nature at the heart of climate action by committing to five key principles:
1. Commit to science-based targets for both climate and nature.
2. Integrate nature into climate transition plans.
3. Assess the impacts and dependencies through the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
4. Eliminate commodity-driven deforestation.
5. Invest in nature-based solutions.
Recognising & Financing the Invaluable Value of Nature: The Summit highlighted the need for a shared understanding and common language on biodiversity across government, finance and science sectors for effective collaboration and decision-making. Martin Præstegaard, the CEO
of ATP, emphasised biodiversity as a significant risk to the financial sector and stressed the integration of biodiversity into financial disclosure. The need to accelerate information flow on the benefits of financing nature and accurately price proxies, reflecting both climate change and biodiversity, is more critical than ever for advancing nature markets.
Bridging Climate & Nature: Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, emphasised nature's incredible ability to maintain climate balance by absorbing CO2 as a stress response to warming. Climate change proves that we have disrupted this fragile balance by burning fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Our foremost priority now must be to help nature recover to continue sequestering greenhouse gases. It is as clear as it gets: without healthy biodiversity, we will not achieve our decarbonisation goals.
Accelerating Change Through Incentivising Framework & Policy: The Summit highlighted the urgent need for transparent, robust policies and standardised frameworks as catalysts to incentivise the private sector and expedite our progress in safeguarding biodiversity. Current government efforts have fallen short of creating an enabling environment for businesses alone. In discussing renewable energy, Rasmus Skov, the Head of Global External Affairs and Positioning at Ørsted stressed the imperative of integrating the biodiversity agenda into policy frameworks to facilitate its mainstream adoption.
Shared Responsibility & Benefits for Water Stewardship, Regenerative Forestry & Agriculture: Rethinking land and water management is crucial for environmental and human health and climate regulation affecting every sector. The private sector must adopt a more integrated nature-people-climate-positive approach that incorporates the expertise and knowledge of various stakeholders while providing incentives for all, including indigenous communities and farmers.
Amplifying Indigenous Insights for a Nature-Positive Future: Inclusion and diversity in voices, especially indigenous knowledge was a cornerstone of our discussions. Indigenous communities hold a reservoir of wisdom on nature cultivated over generations. This inherent knowledge can aid biodiversity preservation, land and water management when integrated with technologies and embedded in modelling methods, business and national plans and more.
Key Announcements 2023
Ørsted’s newly released report Uniting Action on Climate and Biodiversity highlights biodiversity's crucial role in renewable energy expansion and equips policymakers, the energy industry and environmental NGOs with guidelines for a nature-positive energy transition.
Launching Nature-Positive Initiatives at COP28 We are excited to be preparing a unique announcement at COP28 in Dubai to launch the Nature Investment Coalition alongside other meaningful initiatives and building on our success of the Climate Investment Coalition.
From the World Biodiversity Network
Highlights from our speakers and partners
Capgemini released a set of recommendations in their report Preserving the fabric of life: Why biodiversity loss is as urgent as climate change for the corporate sector on how to tackle biodiversity loss and take nature-positive action.
The TNFD calls for businesses to disclose and assess their impacts on nature. In their latest report Recommendations of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures released this week, the TNFD offers practical recommendations for businesses to proactively address their impact on nature.
Renewables Grid Initiative is gearing up to introduce a service offering technical support to energy companies seeking to transition to nature-positive and decarbonised practices, to be launched at COP28.
Pollination announcement of their inaugural Nature Finance Focus report. The report highlights a set of risks and opportunities derived from the financial sector and assesses how well-prepared private businesses are to invest in nature.
Key Annoncements
2022
H.E Erika Mouynes, Minister of Foreign Affairs Panama, announced at World Biodiversity Summit in New York that the Republic of Panama passed a law recognising nature’s “right to exist, persist and regenerate its life cycle”. Being one of the only three countries that has achieved the status of carbon negative country, Panama also achieved the goal of protecting 30% of its land and water before 2030, even committing to protect 40% of their total water by 2024.
Brenda Mallory, Chair, Council on Environmental Quality, The White House, announced in WBS NY the “America the Beautiful Initiative” which translates to the first national conservation goal to conserve at least 30% of US lands and waters before 2030. This initiative helps to address the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity while it also seeks at promoting more equitable access to nature and its benefits for all people in the United States.
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European Investment Bank (EIB) announced at World Biodiversity Summit in Montreal the publication of the report “Forests at the heart of sustainable development”. The publication provides a summary of the benefits, regulations, challenges and potential solutions for sustainability in the forestry sector. It highlights the positive impact on society, describes the laws and policies in place, and looks at the difficulties faced by businesses and investors in this industry.
Iberdrola, a global leader in renewable energy and one of the largest electricity companies in the world, announced at World Biodiversity Summit Montreal it’s ambitious biodiversity plan to become nature positive by 2030. Iberdrola’s nature positive vision includes plans for no net deforestation by 2025, and circular approaches such as the 50% reduction of consumption of raw materials.
NatureMetrics, a world leader in delivering nature and data intelligence using environmental DNA, announced a groundbreaking partnership with IUCN at the World Biodiversity Summit in New York. The initiative, known as the Global eBioAtlas, aims to map global biodiversity by collecting and analyzing DNA from water samples in collaboration with local partners around the world. This foundation will be used to track progress towards the goals set by the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Eurelectric, a sector association representing 3,500 companies in power generation, leading Europe’s energy transition with clean and renewable energy, announced at World Biodiversity Summit - Montreal, the launch of the Power Plant report. This report seeks to achieve integrated renewable energy projects, which restore degraded ecosystems and remove CO2 emissions and contribute to biodiversity regeneration.
2021
O’right announced their established green standards set, including:
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Eliminating all petrochemicals from their products to meet the criteria set by the USDA Certified Biobased Product Label
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Transforming agricultural by-products into valuable ingredients that meet the USDA biobased standards
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Reducing carbon emissions associated with packaging and building a solid and reliable green supply chain
Fresh del Monte announced their commitment to protect and preserve nature in and around their operations, including:
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Achieving 30% of their owned land conserved for biodiversity by 2030 and 100% of their global product volume certified as sustainably grown by a third party by 2025
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Implementing regenerative and soil health management practices in 100% of their owned and associated growers’ farms by 2030
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Planting and/or donating 2,500,000 trees by 2025
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Monitoring 100% of protected areas annually by 2025 by conducting an inventory of the species present in each reserve
Capital for Climate launched a new emerging investment platform for Nature-based Solutions, Rainforest Partnership launched the Rainforest Collective, a collaboration platform for urgent, sweeping forest protection and the creators of Ven from Hub Culture announced a new environmental cryptocurrency, Ven Oxygen (Vo2) which can be generated by protection of nature.