Presentation
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is moving towards establishing its modalities and process for the first Global Review of progress towards the achievement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework scheduled to start in 2025. What are the lessons from the first Global Stocktake (GST) achieved within the framework of the United Nations Climate Convention? How can the methodologies and strategies employed in the GST inspire the CBD’s efforts in transparency and accountability?
Key Messages
- Designing the biodiversity Global Review demands a proactive and impactful approach. It is not just about holding Parties collectively accountable to the GBF; it is about deliberating on the review’s impacts, functions, and objectives. Beyond monitoring, it should foster ambition, learning, support, and facilitate long-term implementation of the GBF.
- The review can serve multiple functions to that end: guiding ambition and implementation, informing essential actors, fostering international cooperation, empowering civil society and biodiversity within ministries, and establishing momentum for long-term goals. National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) are the main instruments for implementing the GBF and national reports are the basis for the review process led by the COP, but the Global Review should add value and adopt an encompassing approach to include factors that significantly impact actual practices or policies at many levels, in accordance with the whole-of-society and whole-of government approaches to include factors that significantly impact actual practices or policies at many levels.
- The overarching objective of the Global Review should be to send clear signals on ambition, progress, and different ways and solutions to strengthen the implementation of the GBF. This could be done through the assessment of concrete gaps for specific sectors or much-needed transformations in the real economy. The Global Review can be taken up as a reference, guiding conversations for further improvements in NBSAPs and COP decisions.
- To ensure the robustness and relevance of the review process to that end, certain modalities need to be carefully considered and implemented. This includes the preparatory and technical phases to build credibility and produce a robust technical report. Moreover, integrating technical dialogues and foresight scenarios can enhance the effectiveness of the review, ensuring that it remains innovative, adaptive and forward-looking. An inclusive approach is also necessary, ensuring broad participation and the incorporation of multiple perspectives from Parties and experts from many fields and regions, ultimately supporting some kind of creative process to identify and showcase collective solutions.
- Recommendations for efficiency and tailored approaches need to be adopted by COP16 at the latest. The first iteration of the review will begin in 2025 and could adopt a pragmatic yet ambitious approach, and focus on specific needs and gaps, such as delays in planning and reporting, and resource mobilization or specific sectors.
