Conference Agenda

Environmental governance increasingly seeks to address the interlinkages between biodiversity loss and climate change. We observe such attempts at different political scales, in different governance approaches, and in conservation instruments such as nature-based solutions (NbS) and protected areas. However, the modes, effects and the interplay of governance at the intersection of biodiversity and climate change are only beginning to be researched and understood. This panel unites papers that, viewed together, address biodiversity-climate interlinkages from global to local levels and through different approaches. In synopsis, the papers show where synergies and trade-offs arise, how these are reinforced by existing governance mechanisms and how synergies could be strengthened and trade-offs minimized. The panel kicks off with a discussion of biodiversity-climate interlinkages in the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, GBF. In particular, the authors elucidate what lessons the GBF’s non-state action agenda can learn from the non-state action agenda under the Paris agreement for better alignment of biodiversity and climate action. This is followed by two papers engaging with the rapidly rising but highly contested concept of NbS, meaning measures that claim to be inspired and supported by nature to tackle societal challenges like climate change. [Author’s name removed for anonymous review process] and colleagues discuss the challenges that arise for the legitimacy and effectiveness of NbS as project cycles are frequently neither aligned with the long duration of ecosystem processes nor with the timing of institutional reform processes. Thereafter [Names removed] further point to the importance of context sensitivity and show how exclusionary NbS can undermine environmental justice in its distribution, participation and recognition dimensions. The final paper [Names removed] analyses conflicts between social and ecological objectives in Caribbean marine protected areas in the context of climate change. In particular, it asks whether initially consensual stakeholder agreements may have detrimental ecological consequences.

In December 2022, 196 countries agreed to new goals and targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) has four overarching goals and 23 targets to halt and reduce global biodiversity loss. After years of negotiations and delays, the adoption of the GBF is seen as a breakthrough bringing a new hope for the world to halt and reverse the global biodiversity crisis. The success of the Global Biodiversity Framework, however, depends on its implementation. During the negotiations, the presence of non-state actors stood out, particularly forward-looking voices from the business and financial sectors, civil society and Indigenous Peoples associations and networks around the world. Such engagement gives a glimpse of the role actors beyond governments could play in the implementation.

This paper’s goal is to set a theoretical framework from a planetary health perspective to support a research and policy outreach programme for a biodiversity action agenda. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has an opportunity to mobilize an action agenda to keep the momentum created by civil society, business, and subnational actors during the negotiations to support implementation. Similar agendas exist, the largest being in support of the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. An action agenda tailored to the GBF has an opportunity to draw lessons from these examples and develop design principles that support specific goals. These include alignment with climate goals, reducing trade offs, setting criteria for credibility of actions and monitoring progress, and integration of human health, and social and equity goals in line with respect of the rights and acknowledgement of the efforts and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in nature recovery and protection.

We conduct a rapid literature review on the global climate action agenda and the emerging literature on a biodiversity action agenda to identify key issues and design principles that have been proposed. Then, a systematic document analysis of policy documents and gray literature before and after the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework allows for setting priorities for the GBF. We present the findings and discuss in light of example cases of community-centered nature protection and restoration initiatives in the Amazon. The discussion focuses on how the proposed design principles can respond to context-specific opportunities and challenges for scaling up local actions and alignment with climate goals, followed by opportunities for future research and policy engagement.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are an increasingly popular approach for addressing the interwoven climate and biodiversity crises. According to the definition by IUCN, they are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously benefiting people and nature. While the capacity of NbS interventions to deliver social and environmental benefits has been critically scrutinized ever since the emergence of the concept, we argue that an important factor influencing their implementation has been largely neglected so far: their temporality.

NbS interventions are commonly designed as projects with a duration of a few years. However, ecosystems may take longer to respond to new management practices and ecosystem governance or management may also change rather slowly. Looking beyond project periods is thus of major relevance. Moreover, the pace of ecosystem and institutional change may vary and it is not yet clear how such divergences affect the implementation and outcomes or even impacts of NbS interventions.

In this paper, we analyze if and how research and practice consider the temporal dimension of NbS and identify key factors that need to be considered in order to match the design of an NbS initiative with the time frames of ecological and institutional processes. We base our analysis on a systematic review of academic literature on NbS as well as on a review of the self-reported activities of international cooperative initiatives (ICIs) in the field of NbS. ICIs can be composed of different types of actors and therefore capture the move of sustainability governance beyond purely state-based rule setting and implementation.

Overall, we find that the temporal dimension of NbS is underacknowledged by both researchers and in the practice of ICIs. That said, our more fine-grained findings include: It is not sufficiently taken into account how different types of NbS require different project time scales. In most cases, NbS planning needs to be much more long term, including notably long-term community involvement, long-term monitoring and long-term financial commitments. In particular, risks change over time in response to climatic, social and institutional changes. We conclude by outlining the need for much more interdisciplinary approaches to account for different social, institutional and ecological temporalities of NbS.

Many governments, businesses, academics, and practitioners support Nature-based Solutions (NbS). NbS are a cornerstone of various international agreements that seek to address pressing societal and ecological issues, among them the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). NbS are actions inspired and supported by nature to tackle societal challenges like climate change and benefit biodiversity and human well-being. While the global perception of NbS is mainly positive, critical social research has questioned their win-win framing by pointing out their limited capacity to address (in)direct drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss (transformative powers) and how they can reinforce or create negative social implications. This article analyzes information on three different NbS projects (area-based conservation, ecosystem-based adaptation and ecosystem-based mitigation) to assess them from an environmental justice perspective. It employs the concept of 'senses of (in)justice' amongst Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and Local Communities (LCs). It draws on semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation data. The paper demonstrates the interlinkages between different dimensions of environmental justice (i.e., distribution, participation and recognition) and the importance of accounting for political-economic and historical context when designing and evaluating NbS. While these projects can be socially transformative at the local level, exclusionary practices (e.g., related to who is allowed to participate in decision-making, supporting elite natural resource control) and lack of traditional knowledge uptake prevent the projects in question from reaching that potential in terms of distribution, participation and recognition of diverse worldviews. NbS are implemented not on empty social landscapes, power asymmetries shape NbS priorities, whose knowledge counts, and how rights, resources, and benefits are distributed and so are injustices created or reinforced.

Climate change and rapid loss of biodiversity, accompanied by growing social inequalities, are among the most pervasive challenges facing humanity. Recent literature urges us to think about climate change and biodiversity loss as being intimately intertwined. Marine Protected Areas (MPA) aim to preserve marine biodiversity. At the same time, MPAs offer, according to the IUCN (2017), “nature-based solutions to support global efforts towards climate change adaptation and mitigation”. A paradigm illustration of the interconnectedness of biodiversity and climate change in governance perspective. But, how are these intersections negotiated on the local MPA level? How do narratives, prominent in the conservation scene, unfold on the local level? This paper aims to explore some of the key tensions and contestations informing the conservation of marine biodiversity in the Caribbean islands of Bonaire and Aruba. Making use of interviews carried out by an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, natural scientists, and practitioners, the paper takes as its point of departure a critical examination of what [Author’s name removed for anonymous review process] calls “conservationland,” that is, the “social worlds, institutions, values systems, worldviews, emotions, and everyday labour” of conservation professionals. Our aim is to shed light on some of the key debates and contestations that have arisen between conservation professionals and other social groups on the islands. Disagreements that appear to be relatively minor from an ecological point of view – such as local people’s rights to fish – turn out to become near-unsurmountable once they take the shape of cultural clash, thereby severely constraining conservation efforts. This begs the question of whether the opposite also occurs. Are stakeholder agreements that look positive and constructive from the outset – about the importance of ecotourism, for instance – potentially disastrous ecologically?