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
26 September 2024
SECOND, New York, USA
Climate Week NYC
26 October 2024
MUSEO - Museo La Tertulia,
Cali, Colombia
alongside UNCBD COP16​
Past Events
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.
Key Outcomes 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.
.png)
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.
Key Announcements 2021
O’right announced their established green standards set, including:
-
Eliminating all petrochemicals from their products to meet the criteria set by the USDA Certified Biobased Product Label
​​
-
Transforming agricultural by-products into valuable ingredients that meet the USDA biobased standards
​​
-
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:
-
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
​
-
Implementing regenerative and soil health management practices in 100% of their owned and associated growers’ farms by 2030
​
-
Planting and/or donating 2,500,000 trees by 2025
​
-
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.