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Team Fauna & Flora is back from New York Climate Week. The week of events is an annual opportunity, coinciding with the UN General Assembly, for global to local leaders to meet, alongside businesses, scientists and activists, to discuss climate change and nature loss and to identify corresponding solutions and action.
Fauna & Flora CEO Kristian Teleki reflects on an energising and invigorating event – and what needs to happen next.
Throughout the week, we were part of a community that showed real commitment to solving the biggest issues our planet has ever faced, but whose optimism was tinged with a healthy amount of frustration. While the magnitude of the task is universally acknowledged, the real and tangible action that needs to happen at pace and scale is woefully lacking and is not proportionate to the challenges we face.
One potentially promising source of much-needed finance to accelerate solutions is biodiversity credits. To this end, Fauna & Flora held a roundtable event at Goals House that looked at the emerging market for biodiversity credits and discussed how to ensure they help channel funding to flow directly and practically to locally led projects. A critical success factor will be a consistent approach, with high integrity and transparency and appropriate metrics and regulation, so that they become attractive to investors and ensure our impact is demonstrable and measurable.
Dead coral after bleaching, Raja Ampat Indonesia. © Zafer Kizilkaya
Dead coral after bleaching, as a result of sea temperature change, in Raja Ampat, Indonesia.
Leadership, and absent leaders
Many of those working in conservation know that solving the climate and nature loss crises is impossible without ecosystem protection and restoration, or without the active involvement of local people.
But as a climate community, we are not all pulling in the same direction on the critical role of action on land-use change and, for example, the importance of reducing deforestation to avert the loss of more nature-based carbon into the atmosphere. We can’t reach net zero without protecting and restoring nature, and we know we need mechanisms beyond, and in addition to, philanthropy to achieve that goal.
It was a week of many insightful and productive conversations. A particular highlight for me was hosting a fireside chat with Kenya’s President Ruto at another Goals House gathering. The President, who is an ecologist by training, was inspiring. His enthusiasm, fortitude, vision and leadership on the issue of climate change and biodiversity loss refilled the ‘optimism tanks’ for many of those attending this event. This came in a week where sadly other government leaders were notably absent from New York or, in the case of the UK and Sweden, backtracking on climate promises.
Kristian Teleki in discussion with Kenya’s President Ruto at NY Climate Week. © Joe Short
Kristian Teleki in discussion with Kenya’s President Ruto at NY Climate Week. © Fauna & Flora
Now is the final opportunity for corporate and government leaders to take serious steps to help scale up action.
Kristian Teleki
Chief Executive Officer
Now is the final opportunity for corporate and government leaders to take serious steps to help scale up action.
Kristian Teleki
Chief Executive Officer
What needs to happen next?
- The voices, expertise and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities must be embedded in all conversations around climate change and biodiversity loss. Not just because they stand to lose the most if the world does not respond quickly enough – Indigenous lands make up around 20% of the Earth’s territory and contain 80% of the world’s biodiversity – but because they hold the solutions and offer the best way forward.
- More immediate action needs to be taken in the world of business. Business leaders are becoming increasingly aware of their impact on nature and climate, but they need to look urgently and seriously at supply chains. It is not enough to look only at the operations that you directly own and control – your overall footprint on our planet includes the impact of all those who help create your products.
- We urgently need to move beyond small-scale and pilot projects. There is a risk that in looking ever more closely at processes and mechanisms, we pick apart and undermine the very solutions that we need. For example, in the voluntary carbon market, one of the few mechanisms available is to channel funds down to the vulnerable carbon-rich habitats and their communities on which the future of our planet depends. Perfect should not be the enemy of good. All solutions should be on the table, and where they need work, let’s work on them. In the meantime, we must act now to support high-integrity, locally led efforts to protect and restore nature.
- Let’s stop trying to come up with more innovative finance mechanisms. Those on the front line of biodiversity loss and climate change (i.e. Indigenous Peoples and local communities) are not being adequately resourced to seriously take on these existential global threats. What is needed are practical finance mechanisms that move funds to places and spaces with speed and scale. There is no point in creating big funds and making huge financial commitments if you are not serious about moving these funds without imposing huge bureaucratic burdens and unnecessary transactional costs. Keep it simple and get it done.
- Invest now, not later. Too much time is being wasted to come up with the perfect investable project that has little to no risk. We need to act and learn at the same time, and accept that we may not get it right at every juncture. In reality, we do not have the luxury of time and those on the front line are operating with, in most cases, 60 to 70% confidence levels that the decisions they are making are going to be the right ones. Every single unit of time wasted on more meetings, workshops and conferences is precious time we could be spending making serious progress to ensure that we pass on a healthier planet to our children.
Marianne Teoh and student conducting seagrass surveys in Cambodia. © Paul Colley
Marianne Teoh and student conducting seagrass surveys in Cambodia, in order to better protect this critical, carbon-storing habitat.
Last orders for government and business
With each year that we discuss the crises that our planet faces, we see more and more people wanting to take serious action to help.
However, while it’s always hugely positive to look around and see who is attending these events, I want us to remember who wasn’t there. Who is still failing to show up for our planet?
The doors of the last chance saloon will soon be closing. Now is the final opportunity for corporate and government leaders to take serious steps to help scale up action. With COP28 fast approaching, I want to see more long-term commitments from world leaders and see the finance community taking serious steps towards practical action, not more innovation.
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