Few issues are more enmeshed than climate and nature.
Scientists are increasingly learning how biodiversity loss and climate change compound and reinforce each other. For example, deforestation releases greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change, spurring wildfires and forest dieback that then release more emissions and cause further warming. It’s a vicious cycle that both accelerates and amplifies the extreme heat, drought, flooding and other impacts endangering communities around the world.
Yet despite their inexorable connection, policymaking for climate and for nature still largely operate in separate spheres.
Just this year, the world saw major international summits to advance three global treaties: the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. The successive convenings brought needed attention to climate change and ecosystem degradation. But they also laid bare one of the biggest barriers to tackling these dual crises — siloed thinking.
That’s where 2025 can change things. Opportunities this year can help the world finally start addressing climate and nature as the interrelated issues they are.
It will require ambition and finance.
Acting with Ambition for People, Nature and Climate
The past year showed us why immediate action on climate and nature is essential.
We witnessed the hottest year on record. Devastating floods took lives and destroyed homes in Brazil and Kenya — places where degraded landscapes make communities more vulnerable to heavy rainfall. Blistering heat caused heatstroke and deaths in India, Europe and the U.S. Wildfires scorched South America.
At the same time, agriculture and other industries continued their rampant destruction of nature. WRI analysis revealed that the world still loses 10 football fields of tropical primary forest every minute. A significant driver is production of the soy, beef, palm oil and other commodities we use every day. Not only does tree cover loss spew carbon emissions, it degrades the many benefits forests provide, such as clean water, foods, medicines and livelihoods.
People simply cannot thrive without healthy ecosystems and a stable climate. That’s why policymakers need to act ambitiously on climate and nature — together — in 2025.
There are several opportunities for them to do so:
1) Countries’ next round of climate pledges.
As part of the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to submit new climate action plans in early 2025, known as “nationally determined contributions,” or NDCs. NDCs form the backbone of international climate action, yet they currently fall far short of the level of ambition needed.
Research shows global emissions must drop 43% from 2019 levels by 2030 to prevent increasingly dangerous floods, droughts and other impacts, but current NDCs will only cut them by 8%. Countries’ climate plans also fail to address the vast and vital role nature plays in stabilizing the climate: Less than half of NDCs include quantified targets for land use change and forestry.
The new round of climate plans could close the emissions gap, but only with significant action across every sector. This includes recognizing the importance of nature-based solutions, such as by setting conservation and restoration targets for forests and other ecosystems.
2) Continued negotiations on the global biodiversity treaty.
As part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, nations agreed in 2022 to protect 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030 while mobilizing billions for conservation. The 2024 UN biodiversity summit (COP16) in Cali, Colombia was supposed to yield plans for achieving the “30×30” target, but negotiations stalled.
Leaders will resume talks in Rome this February. There, they have an opportunity to truly put the 30×30 target within reach.
Necessary outcomes include a plan to finance the 30×30 goal — one that helps close the $700 billion gap in annual spending needed to protect nature and eliminates harmful subsidies fueling its destruction. Countries should also put forward strong National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) that collectively bring the amount of land and sea under conservation from 17% and 8%, respectively, to 30% by 2030. All countries were due to submit NBSAPs last year, but only 44 have done so.
Countries should ensure their NBSAPs support their NDCs, and vice versa. Colombia, for example, said it may submit a unified nature and climate plan. Regardless of whether countries submit separate or combined plans, all policies should reflect climate and nature’s interrelationship.
3) System-changing domestic policies.
NDCs and NBSAPs are just words on paper without ambitious domestic policies to back them up. Countries should set policies that transform the sectors impacting nature and climate the most: food and energy systems and cities.
A recent example from Denmark showcases what this kind of system change looks like. The country’s 2024 Green Tripartite Agreement taxes emissions from livestock production while also restoring peatlands, planting trees and paying farmers to reduce nitrogen pollution. The policy could reshape Denmark’s food system into one that supports agricultural production while simultaneously reducing emissions and boosting biodiversity. We hope to see more countries produce similarly ambitious national policies in 2025.
4) COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
There’s no better place to see climate and nature come together than the UN climate summit in November 2025 (COP30). The conference is the first-such summit to be held inside the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon stores billions of tons of greenhouse gases, but is on the verge of becoming a net carbon source due to continued deforestation and degradation.
The location should inspire negotiators to put nature-based climate solutions at the heart of the COP agenda. Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva has already said the country will use COP30 to “create synergy” between the UN conventions for biodiversity, climate and desertification. Brazil also aims to operationalize the Tropical Forests Finance Facility by COP30, an ambitious plan to mobilize $125 billion to conserve more than a billion hectares of tropical forest.
COP30 is also a key moment for countries and others to demonstrate progress against existing nature commitments — such as the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use — and put forward new initiatives.
Backing Ambition with Finance
Of course ambitious policies are only useful if they’re actually implemented. That’s where finance comes in.
By 2035, developing countries will need $1.3 trillion in finance annually to build resilience, shift toward net-zero economies, and conserve and restore nature. The world will need to access every possible avenue of funding, including public and private sources, and use every tool to ensure finance starts flowing to the right places.
Finance is a system — one with both demand and supply side interventions. The supply side consists of public and private financial institutions like the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs). Continued and ambitious reforms at these institutions can help grow the pot of finance available for both nature and climate goals.
But there’s also the demand side to consider — the developing countries who seek to attract more funding to properly invest in nature and climate. Just as finance is essential for turning pledges into reality, so, too, can ambitious domestic policies unlock more finance. A good regulatory environment is critical for attracting outside investments. Another tool countries can use to consolidate their nature and climate efforts is designing “country platforms” that mobilize, coordinate and channel public and private investments into nature and climate solutions. Brazil recently launched such a platform to attract foreign investment.
Institutions on both the demand and supply side can also collaborate in innovative ways to simultaneously invest in nature and climate. This could include operationalizing the Tropical Forests Finance Facility; expanding the use of debt-for-nature swaps; or, as Barbados recently demonstrated for the first time, implementing debt-for-climate-resilience swaps.
As we look to 2025, immediate priorities include securing a strong finance deal from the UN biodiversity talks and moving toward implementation of the $300 billion annual climate finance goal recently established at the 2024 UN climate summit (COP29). But ultimately, these must fit into the bigger, systemic shifts needed to meet long-term financing goals.(WRI will explore how to create a more sustainable financial system in more depth at our annual Stories to Watch event. Tune in on January 30, 2025.)
Building a Future that’s Good for People, Nature and Climate
These aren’t the only ways to bring nature and climate together, nor will these actions alone tackle the vast and dual crises before us. But they will start to bring together the two worlds that are integral to the future of our one planet.
Let’s make 2025 the year for climate and nature.
