The European Green Deal & Nature-based Solutions for people, biodiversity and climate

Carolina Moeller, a Partner at Leader’s Quest, opened the event and moderated the first panel. A recurring message in the high-level panel was the opportunity presented by the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy, the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to align and mobilise action on NbS. The panel noted the need for the EU’s continued leadership in addressing the three global crises and for more concerted efforts at the global level. For 2021, a global approach involves seizing the opportunities afforded by the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the fifth UN Environment Assembly, the Food Systems Summit, the UN Oceans Conference, the IUCN World Conservation Congress, and the Rio Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification.

“As UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report makes clear, we are in a climate emergency, heading to a world which is at least 3^oC warmer by the end of the century. Addressing the climate emergency, requires us to rapidly step up decarbonization of our economies, AND invest in restoring ecosystems, that protect us “nature’s infrastructure”. As the UN Secretary-General has noted, making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the number one priority for everyone, everywhere because making peace with nature is about securing people’s well-being and sustainability.”

- Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme

Svenja Schulze, the German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, underlined that “nature is our most important ally” and holds solutions that are “are socially fair and extremely cost efficient.” She emphasized that “through our collective commitment, we can establish nature-based solutions as a key pillar of successful climate action [and] biodiversity conservation both in the EU and world wide.” The Minister also noted that “the goal of bringing nature back in our lives is at the heart of the EU Biodiversity Strategy” and that “now we must implement it.” Regarding specific action points, she stressed that “[n]ature-based solutions must be part of a green infrastructural change, both in densely populated areas and in rural areas.” She particularly called for “innovative approaches to peatland conservation”, which are among the most effective carbon sinks, and which have been a particular focus of Germany’s climate initiatives.

Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director, noted that the signatories of the Paris Agreement still have much work to do to achieve their net-zero pledges. She commended the EU’s leadership and encouraged further international solidarity. She spoke about how NbS can help gain the necessary ground, since NbS have the potential to provide one third of the necessary emissions reduction for meeting the Paris Agreement. She asserted that the Rio Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification “all go hand in hand. You can’t take one and pick that and make that the priority,” adding that “if anything brings it together there is probably nothing better than NbS: this idea that investing in nature’s infrastructure—the natural ecosystems that exist and provide the very underpinning for life on earth—[is] what we need to do.” She stressed that NbS and ongoing decarbonisation efforts are “not an either-or situation” but “a plus and plus” situation. These efforts will mutually reinforce and spur one another and will help mitigate costs for future generations. The importance of attaching green strings to the European Green Deal and to stimulus packages was also underlined. 

In the context of post-pandemic recovery, Marius Vaščega, Head of Cabinet of the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, emphasized that “[n]ature-based solutions are cost-effective and designed for the long-term. They simultaneously provide environmental, social, and economic benefits, and at the same time help build resilience.” Bruno Oberle, IUCN Director General, stressed the importance of “[c]atalyzing finance and investment instruments to support scaling up of such solutions.” He noted that “[t]he EU sustainable finance platform is a very good step in this direction, but we need more action on public, private, and blended financing instruments that favor NbS approaches.” Jytte Guteland, Member of the European Parliament, spoke to the importance of maritime ecosystems as carbon sinks and the need for the EU to incentivize the protection of such ecosystems.

In a video-statement, Lord Zac Goldsmith, the UK Minister for Pacific and the Environment spoke of unleashing nature’s potential and what it means for COP26, where nature will be front and centre. Sergio Costa, the Italian Minister of the Environment, noted that Italy is domestically investing €30 million in reforestation over the next three years and intends to scale their efforts towards “a complete overhaul of urban centers to make them more resilient, green and accessible to all” during Italy’s presidency of the G20. João Pedro Matos Fernandes, Portuguese Minister for the Environment and Climate Action, expressed the 2021 Portuguese EU Presidency’s intention to further strengthen the EU’s climate and biodiversity leadership.

Expert Panel 1: NbS for implementing the EU Green Deal

Under the moderation of Chantal Van Ham, IUCN’s EU Programme Manager for Nature Based Solutions, the first expert panel addressed the challenges and opportunities of implementing NbS in conjunction with the European Green Deal. Radhika Murti, Director of the IUCN Global Ecosystems Management Programme, spoke to the importance of having a clear and shared understanding of what NbS  is “because open-ended concepts become very challenging to implement,” and defined NbS as “solutions that rely on healthy ecosystems, which can produce goods and services for people, but without harming nature.” Ms. Murti highlighted how the IUCN global standard for NbS facilitates NbS design, investment decisions and impact analysis and stands in a mutually reinforcing relationship with the European Green Deal. She was followed by Eduardo Carqueijeiro, Adviser of the Secretary of State for Nature Conservation, Forests and Territorial Planning. Mr. Carqueijeiro outlined Portugal’s range of NbS initiatives, including support for networks and start-ups that facilitate the circular economy.  

Philippe Tulkens, Deputy Head of the Climate and Planetary Boundaries Unit at DG Research and Innovation at the European Commission spoke about the need to escalate research in NbS. He expressed the Commission’s commitment to lead in this area, having already invested €200 million in NbS research projects since 2016. Florence Jeantet, Managing Director of One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) introduced the OP2B platform, which seeks to highlight and address the risks to the food system that climate change and biodiversity loss pose. OP2B brings together twenty-five companies from across the food system to combat these risks. Gilles Lecuir, Project Manager at the Regional Agency for Biodiversity in the Paris Region and an expert in urban ecology and public policies, explained how NbS can be pursued in urban environments. Rounding out the panel, Laura Peters, a Dutch biologist based in the Cairngorms National Park and the Youth Representative of the Europarc Federation, spoke about her work in making youth voices heard and the need for organisations to pursue true partnerships with youth about nature.

Expert Panel 2: Building momentum for NbS on the global scale

The third panel turned to the implementation of NbS in the global context,  co-moderated by Veronika Hunt Šafránková, Head of the UNEP Brussels Office, and Chantal Marijnissen, Head of Unit at DG International Cooperation and Development at the European Commission. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Coordinator of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad, spoke to the leading role indigenous peoples play as custodians of eighty percent of the world’s biodiversity, and to whom NbS is “a way of living”. She also highlighted the importance of partnership in co-creating and implementing NbS, and the need to invest in nature to protect all systems, including people and health. Stephen O’Driscoll, Head of the Environment, Climate and Social Office at the European Investment Bank (EIB), described the various finance models and mechanisms that the EIB uses to foster investment in NbS as well as their efforts to show investors that such investments are worthwhile. He offered the EIB’s Natural Capital Financing Facility as an example.

Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, Director of the Climate Change Directorate at the Forestry Commission of Ghana, described Ghana’s efforts to preserve and restore forests and stressed the importance of prioritizing sustainable production and improving governance to address such challenges. She acknowledged that the European Green Deal provides a phenomenal basis to galvanise action across the entire globe, building on partnerships such as the UN-REDD Programme that are already delivering. Mette Wilkie, Director for Forestry at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), underlined that the upcoming Decade of Ecosystem Restoration that is being led by the FAO and UNEP is an opportunity to “prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide and to raise awareness of the importance of successful ecosystem restoration.” She drew particular attention to the effect of land degradation on emissions and the potential for pathogen outbreaks due to that degradation. Akanksha Khatri, Head of the Nature Action Agenda at the World Economic Forum, described the WEF’s New Nature Economy Report Series, which seeks to facilitate a nature-positive economy by informing and engaging with the private sector on relevant issues. The final speaker of the event was Bernadette Fischler Hooper, Head of International Advocacy at the World Wildlife Fund UK, who discussed the growing political momentum for NbS, including the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature to which eighty heads of state committed in September 2020. She also emphasized the importance of sustained leadership on NbS from across all sectors.

Chantal Marijnissen concluded the moderation by reiterating that “nature-based solutions can go to scale” and that the dialogue had underscored that NbS is not a risk, but a great opportunity. She also impressed the importance of putting people at the center of solutions, of taking a human rights-based approach, and of integrating NbS in strategies to build back better from the pandemic. In closing, she reflected that the European Green Deal has a central role to play in supporting and scaling up NbS, adding that 2021 provides many opportunities to accelerate commitments and implementation at scale as well as to build a pathway towards meeting Climate and Development objectives.   

Summary by UNEP

The recording of the event can be found here

The press release from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of Germany (in German) can be found here

The related news article of IUCN “EU Green Deal and Nature Based Solutions” can be found here