Purpose on Payday- October 2024: driving sustainable success in 2024 and beyond

Today marks the end of the first week of COP16, the Conference of the Parties (COP) for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), taking place in Cali, Colombia. Over the years this gathering has played second fiddle to the COP for Climate Change, but the last COP15 conference in 2022 marked a step change for this summit. It concluded with a Paris style agreement for biodiversity, with 188 governments (including the UK) agreeing to a new set of international goals for biodiversity called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

Now, with an agreement in place, the biodiversity COP is arguably just as significant as the climate COP in securing a sustainable future, not least because we cannot unpick nature from climate change and our health and prosperity depends on it too. Our food security relies upon healthy ecosystems, and severe weather patterns, flooding and drought are exacerbated by diminished tree and plant life.

This year’s event is underpinned by the theme, “Peace with Nature.” Everything will centre around improving the relationship we have with the environment and reflect on how we can create “an economic model that does not prioritize the extraction, overexploitation and pollution of nature”.

Alarming statistics have driven home the need to for this conference to be successful.

The WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024, which will be an important resource for policymakers at the conference, showed wildlife population sizes have declined 73% in between 1970 and 2020.

But the success of this Cali summit rests on transforming the commitments of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) into actionable plans. Countries are expected to come and present their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), but there is concern the majority will arrive empty handed.

We’ll be watching closely on the outcomes, but it is worth noting that just as there is now an imperative for meaningful net zero commitments from corporates, we expect it to become just as important for them to demonstrate how they are limiting their impact on nature and, ideally, taking measures to enhance it.

Meanwhile, we are just a few weeks away from COP29, which kicks off in Azerbaijan on 11th November. However, the hosts have little to celebrate yet, after a challenging month of criticism and controversy. The credibility of Azerbaijan to lead the climate talks and bring world leaders together was called into question as a Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now issued a report highlighting human rights violations and the silencing of dissents. It called on Western nations to use COP to apply pressure. The report said “In the months leading up to COP29, Azerbaijani authorities have arrested dozens of prominent activists and media figures on baseless, serious criminal charges. The arrests are overwhelmingly linked to highly restrictive laws on non-governmental organizations (NGOs).”  

This, along with reports of Azerbaijan’s continued oil and gas expansion, damages the credibility of COP more broadly. As pointed out in a Washington Post opinion, this is the third COP to be held in a dictatorship and second in a petrostate, which calls into question whether COP is just “’greenwashing’ some of the world’s most repressive rulers and most enthusiastic extractors of fossil fuels.”

Another distraction and potential bump in the road for COP’s success is the upcoming US election. There have been reports of countries “holding back their positions” until they know who the President elect will be, and such uncertainty is contributing to incredibly slow and weak pre-COP talks, so there is no real sense of momentum leading up to the Conference.

The lead up to COP isn’t usually straightforward, but this time around it seems particularly uncertain, and November 2024 will probably not be the transformative time for global climate action that so many hope for.