2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The 28th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 28) will be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12, 2023.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries will seek to raise global ambition and accelerate national action on climate change to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

This year’s UN climate change conference will focus on the need for transformational action to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals. A recent assessment designed to evaluate the global response to the climate crisis showed countries are far off track to achieve their climate goals. COP 28 provides a critical opportunity to catalyze action for drastically reducing emissions across all sectors, and shifting trillions of dollars in global investment toward low-emissions, climate-resilient development.

The world must rapidly reduce greenhouse emissions across the board. Harnessing the full potential of nature is key to reaching the net-zero transitions needed by 2030. Nature-based solutions provide cost-effective and readily available opportunities for countries and the international community to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as address the climate impacts that are already transforming communities and ecosystems. Nature-based solutions must be included in countries’ national climate action plans and complementary Paris Agreement mechanisms.

During formal negotiations under the UNFCCC, Conservation International will advise countries on the need to accelerate the delivery of support and incentives for implementing nature-based solutions for climate action. The critical role of nature should be reflected in all negotiation topics under the Paris Agreement, especially on climate ambition, adaptation and the mobilization of transformational finance — including through international cooperation mechanisms. We will advise governments to ensure the outcome of the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake process provides specific, actionable targets and recommendations to guide national and international climate action over the next few years.

Our approach

Conserving nature is critical to the success of the Paris Agreement. Protecting, sustainably managing and restoring natural ecosystems, such as forests and wetlands, can provide at least 30 percent of the global action needed to limit average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Yet, nature-based solutions currently receive only 3 percent of global climate finance. The financing gap for climate mitigation needed in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors is larger than the financing gap to mitigate climate change in other sectors (energy, transport, and industry) — and does not account for the billions of dollars that continue to flow into practices that destroy nature and drive greenhouse gas emissions. Estimates show nature-related climate action requires between about US$ 100-300 billion a year in funding — about 10 to 30 times what’s currently available — to meet the Paris Agreement’s targets.

Nature remains among the most effective — and cost-effective — climate solutions. U.N. research shows that three actions — reducing the destruction of forests and other ecosystems, restoring ecosystems, and improving the management of working lands, such as farms — are among the top five most effective strategies for cutting climate-warming carbon. Protecting and restoring nature is also necessary to achieve most of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which were established in 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives of people everywhere.

Increasing actions that protect and conserve nature to address the climate, biodiversity and ocean crises is key. Nature conservation can directly and materially improve the lives of billions of people around the world. As stewards of lands that contain almost a quarter of the world’s land-based carbon, Indigenous peoples and local communities are on the front lines of climate change. To recognize the importance of these stakeholders, Conservation International works to connect Indigenous peoples and local communities to funding, training and technology — helping to secure their land rights so that protecting nature also protects their livelihoods.

Conservation International helps countries achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement by providing policy recommendations, scientific models, tools, and funding platforms for implementing natural climate solutions at scale. We envision a world where nature’s contribution to addressing climate change is maximized — meaning natural climate solutions are implemented to their fullest potential for mitigating climate change and are also fully deployed in places where ecosystems can help vulnerable populations adapt to the already-present and future effects of climate change.

Our Policy Objectives for COP 28

Conservation International works to equip decision makers with accessible, policy-relevant science to restore and protect critical ecosystems as part of global climate action.

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai, Conservation International will strive to advance the role of nature in implementing the Paris Agreement by calling on countries to:

Ensure the Global Stocktake outcome fully reflects the critical role of nature-based solutions, low-carbon agriculture and inclusive, rights-based approaches in realizing the goals of the Paris Agreement:

• Galvanize ambitious climate action with specific recommendations to reach global climate and biodiversity goals by halting and reversing nature loss by 2030, while rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.
• Encourage parties to include specific targets, policies and actions within their national climate plans that deploy nature-based solutions to mitigate and address the consequences of climate change.
• Strongly urge countries to dramatically scale annual financing for agriculture, forestry and land use-sector climate action and call for the elimination or reformation of negative incentives, such as subsidies, that are inconsistent with sustainable land management.
• Recognize the integral role that Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth and ethnic minorities play in successful, locally led nature-based climate action, and request that countries implement inclusive approaches and environmental and social safeguards to climate action.

Increase the efficiency of delivering climate goals and finance through cooperative mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement:

• Negotiations should focus on finalizing the major outstanding Article 6 mechanisms on international carbon trading, as well as ensure the negotiations maintain a narrow scope in line with their mandate, avoiding any obstacles to scaling up nature-based solutions.
• All approaches under Article 6 should accelerate nature-based solutions with rigorous environmental and social integrity — and should include a broad range of stakeholders, including Indigenous peoples. For this purpose, countries should encourage nature-based removals and avoid imposing any requirements that could disproportionately discourage their use under the Article 6 mechanisms.

Effectively structure the new Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA) to accelerate nature-positive climate action in the agriculture sector.

• Ensure the SJWA workshops focus on how countries will collectively work over the long-term to unlock ambitious climate action in agriculture, ensure food security and achieve the objectives agreed at COP 27.
• Design the SJWA workshops to give significant time for informal interventions and back-and-forth dialogue from countries and civil society, ensuring that each workshop includes a variety of voices.

Strengthen the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and local communities in climate policy processes:

• Consistently apply the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP)’s side-by-side collaborative model between countries and Indigenous peoples — and implement its recommendations on engaging these groups across UNFCCC processes.
• Ensure the full realization of LCIPP functions by implementing the second three-year workplan and promote spaces for its representatives to contribute to relevant negotiations, including the Article 6.8 work program, the Global Goal on Adaptation, and Loss and Damage funding arrangements.
• Increase meaningful engagement of governments in the LCIPP activities, especially those aimed at improving the participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities in national climate policy.

Continue building and enhancing urgent action on the ocean-climate nexus:

• Call for increased technical and scientific support and financing to include coastal and marine nature-based solutions in areas under UNFCCC processes, including updated Nationally Determined Contributions, Ocean and Climate Change Dialogues, and the Nairobi Work Program’s Thematic Expert Group on Oceans, among others.
• Increase and mobilize finance flows for coastal and marine nature-based solutions within negotiations and processes related to climate finance.
• Support synergies for ocean–climate action across international policy processes, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the 2030 Agenda and related Sustainable Development Goals.

Integrate nature and climate-vulnerable people in the Global Goal on Adaptation framework:

• Set an overarching target that centers nature, people and livelihoods for the Global Goal on Adaptation; for example: “By 2030, reduce vulnerability and enhance long-term climate resilience and adaptive capacity of 100% of the population or areas most vulnerable to climate change in each country (reducing impacts on people, supporting livelihoods, and preserving land, freshwater and ocean ecosystems)”.
• Establish detailed targets that complement other global frameworks. Include nature-based solutions as part of the crosscutting considerations or themes that are aligned with each step of the adaptation policy cycle.

Enable the new funding arrangements for addressing Loss & Damage to channel financing to nature-based solutions:

• Effectively channel financing to non-economic losses and include a strong focus on responses through nature-based solutions.
• Prioritize funding to solutions that build climate resilience over time and recognize that nature-based climate action can increase the efficacy of future solutions for addressing losses and damage.
• Ensure that developing countries will receive adequate support for the readiness and capacity- building needed to quickly access loss and damage finance — and implement solutions to address loss and damage while building resilience.

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