Saving Life on Earth — Together
Identifying resources needed for inclusive engagement to implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the national and sub-national levels
By Rosalind Helfand & Rob Sassor
If ever there was a challenge that required whole-of-government, whole-of-society approaches to solve — spanning continents and cultures — it would be this: saving life from collapse. After all, despite significant conservation efforts in recent decades, we have lost more than two-thirds of all animal populations since 1970, a trend that threatens to undermine the ecosystems that are the foundation of our existence.
Recognizing this urgency, nearly every nation in the world (less the United States, which is not united on this front) met in Montreal in December 2022 to finalize the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). That is, a strategic plan with 23 Targets to achieve by 2030 and four Goals to achieve by 2050 to save nature, including humanity. Although many targets lack the level of ambition that the biodiversity crisis calls for, one target stands out among them.
At the eleventh hour, Indigenous leaders, enlightened negotiators, and other advisors secured Target 22 to “ensure the full, equitable, inclusive, effective and gender-responsive representation and participation in decision-making.” Powerful words to be embedded in a framework adopted by nearly every nation on the globe; a recognition in policy and environment spheres that the health of the planet is inextricably linked with the health and equity of its people.
These strokes of the pen are an important precedent. Following through will be what saves us.
From Targets to Action: National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans
The method to implement the GBF at the national level (and potentially sub-nationally and locally) is called a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). Nations are called upon to not only update their NBSAPs— which will last through 2030, and potentially beyond—for the UN CBD COP16 in October 2024; nations are also called upon to successfully engage their communities in updating and implementing the GBF through their NBSAPs. Target 22 is therefore one of the goals of the process while also serving to advance the successful planning and implementation of the entire process.
Ever the pragmatists, we (the coauthors) engaged colleagues among a diverse mix of national governments — both during COP 15 and since— to get a sense of what will be easy versus hard in successfully implementing the GBF to fully realize the inclusive mandate of Target 22. The material that follows is inspired by the insights they shared, our own observations during the COP, and our biodiversity work globally.
In the material that follows, we share simple tools for:
- assessing a government’s current capacity, challenges, and opportunities for an inclusive implementation process;
- identifying resources needed to ensure capacity for this process; and
- successfully launching the process.
While focused on biodiversity contexts, we also hope these tools will be useful to any groups wanting to understand what resources they might need to advance inclusive engagement for the benefit of people and the planet.
Making Space for Complexity
From Buddha to Bacon to Bolivian law, enlightened people have long invited us to awaken to life’s interconnectedness. As Robin Wall Kimmerer has written, “…all flourishing is mutual.”
A range of resources are available to help governments identify systemic solutions to address the root causes of biodiversity loss. Examples include: John Kania and Mark Kramer’s work on collective impact; Dan Vexler’s work on systems thinking; Regina Rodrigues’ work on integrating diverse information into science; and Soumyajit Bhar’s work expanding the literature on consumptive behaviors to encompass what he calls the “global south”, to name a few. Some groups have even developed tools and resources that focus on justice and collaboration across differences (for one example, click here).
What is often missing is structured guidance and sufficient resources for governments to ensure the full, equitable, and inclusive participation of an array of stakeholders, as Target 22 calls nations to do. We hope the material that follows will support governments in strengthening relationships and centering justice in their work on behalf of the land and species they steward.
The How: Principles for Engagement
As with the implementation of the GBF itself, inclusive engagement is as much about the how and with whom as it is about what a government does.
When implementing the GBF and the inclusive engagement that underpins it, several supporting principles are important to facilitate an inclusive approach to engagement:
- Curiosity: Start by listening. Listen more than you speak. If you aren’t sure that you understand what someone means, ask them to elaborate.
- Diversity: Map your stakeholders at all levels of society and governance and invite them to the table. Periodically reflect and re-assess whether your process represents the full diversity of interested parties and, if not, how to engage those who are not yet part of the conversation. Support safe spaces for diverse participation.
- Facilitation: Ensure that your intention is not to control processes but to facilitate progress through meaningful, open engagement.
- Honesty: This is critical given the mistrust many communities and groups at times hold for local, regional, and national governments. Rebuilding that trust will require more than honesty — but it’s an important start.
- Humility: To successfully implement the GBF, you need the expertise of those who know the landscapes and local biodiversity the best — including communities living among and near wildlife. Be humble. Remember that you may need them more than they need you.
- Resolve: When engaging communities and groups you haven’t worked with as often (or ever), it is natural to encounter difficulties. There are no shortcuts in building trust with new groups. It is important to lean in when things get difficult and know that you may need to work harder than them to make the new relationship work.
- Respect: Some groups hold sovereignty over critical information and data, as guaranteed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Others have important expertise, such as about migration routes and wildlife populations. Just as you would do with any expert, resource those you engage to facilitate their participation.
- Transparent and Co-creative: Approach engagement in a manner that is open and offers feedback loops to ensure opportunities for ongoing collaboration and dialogue. Engage in discussions from inception that facilitate real integration of stakeholders’ ideas and promote genuine co-ownership and co-stewardship.
The Who Part 1: Interested Stakeholders and Local Government Entity Identification
In any community, there is incredible richness in the diversity of its people who each have a stake in a thriving planet. The purpose of mapping interested stakeholders and local government entities is to identify those who have the most to gain or lose from your work, to help you expand beyond “usual suspect” partners, and to unlock new opportunities.
To aid you in promoting inclusion and diversity in NBSAP design and implementation, we share the following six general categories (see Fig. 1) to inspire your thinking about prospective interested parties. Where possible, a national government would conduct this exercise with government agencies and civil society organizations in fields relevant to those listed in the Global Biodiversity Framework—so that, together, they identify leaders and groups who may be beyond the government’s field of view.
Depending on the complexity of your process, you may also map stakeholders per each of the 23 targets. Regardless of whether you complete one pie chart or twenty, or if you scrap the chart altogether and simply write lists, what’s key is to think critically about those with a vested interest in biodiversity outcomes. In urban areas, public health officials have often invested in environmental justice; on game hunting reserves, it might be the scouts — rather than the companies managing the reserve — whose behaviors have the most direct impact, such as by burning landscapes to help wealthy hunters more easily spot prey. It’s the creativity you bring to the process that is more important than the framework you use.
Selecting for Diversity
As you shift toward broader engagement, you will benefit from reaching out intentionally to groups from the full range of sectors in your society (i.e., from each slice of the pie above). After all, successful whole-of-government, whole-of-society approaches that have buy-in and support from diverse segments of society are better poised to generate long-lasting solutions in most contexts.
It’s valuable to think also across scales. Local groups — those of and by a community — are often more trusted than those with broader mandates and missions; at the same time, they might not work at scales broad enough to advance landscape scale impact. Engaging a mix of local, regional, and national governments and groups may be essential for long-term success.
Once you have developed the list of governments and groups you seek to engage, we suggest pausing to reflect on it. Some questions to ask yourself, to help you augment the list, include:
- Are we selecting prospective collaborators who represent the richness and diversity of biodiversity interests in our nation, including Indigenous peoples and community groups?
- Are we elevating the leadership of women?
- Are we tapping into the intersectional interests that are aligned with the cause of stewarding biodiversity and landscapes/seascapes?
The Who Part 2: Interested Party Engagement
Mindful of the principles for engagement (above), you will want to do your homework prior to engaging prospective collaborators in an inclusive NBSAP update that realizes the 23 Targets of the GBF. You will be in a stronger position if you take the time to understand their needs and contexts as they relate to biodiversity conservation, starting with desk research and reviewing other resources you have access to. When in doubt, simply ask.
To those ends, below is a sample engagement guide that you can adapt to the cultural and social contexts relevant to where you work. To download this as a worksheet, click here.
The Who Part 3: Test What You’ve Heard
Once you have conducted the outreach above, we recommend pulling together throughlines, including insights on resources available to share and resources needed to participate in collaborative efforts. If resources allow, it would be ideal to bring these stakeholders together — in person is preferable — to test what you have heard and refine together the resources that your government may request internationally to support Global Biodiversity Framework implementation. Questions you may wish to ask include:
- What would successful collaboration across these groups look like?
- What are the implications for how groups engage as a collective and/or as sub-groups?
- What resources would we need to communicate with each other on an ongoing basis?
- What resources would we need for deeper engagement on a periodic basis (e.g., annual summit, bi-annual or quarterly meetings)?
- What capacity-building needs are priorities to enable cross-sector, cross-discipline, and cross-cultural collaboration?
- What resources are already available to us to support these needs?
The What: Requesting Resources to Support Inclusive Engagement
Informed by the engagement above, your government should now have a better sense of the range of needs for implementing its national and subnational plans in support of the Global Biodiversity Framework. We encourage you to also consider these categories of needs:
- What have you learned about your government’s skills and capabilities for inclusive engagement? What, if any, gaps are there? What resources and capacity-building might your government need? (Common examples include coaching related to cross-cultural respect and understanding, building relationships of trust, and sharing power.)
- What resources (such as communication assets and people power) will your government need to facilitate the inclusive engagement that you’ve co-created with diverse stakeholders?
- What capabilities will your government need to disaggregate data and communicate its analyses—since this is so often a key enabling factor in advancing equitable approaches?
- How can your government fairly and consistently resource the expertise and participation of participating groups?
- How can your government mainstream this process and results internally so that there is support and uptake across departments and ministries?
Your answers to these questions, along with the more specific needs identified with your prospective partners, can then be folded into a budget request to your Ministry, national government and, on their behalf, to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Secretariat — thereby informing discussions during and before the October 2024 Conference of Parties related to mobilizing resources for implementation.
Each government will have its own budgeting format. We share the below for illustrative purposes. To download this as a worksheet, click here.
Conclusion
We offer the above tools to help nations implement Target 22 and achieve its essential targets — such as improving “Trends in linguistic diversity and numbers of speakers of Indigenous languages” and “Trends in the degree to which traditional knowledge and practices are respected [through implementation].”
For those who are students of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, you have hopefully noticed that the approach above not only helps governments request resources for inclusive engagement in support of implementing Target 22 in conjunction with the full suite of GBF targets. This approach also speaks to the considerations for implementation in Section C — which discusses the engagement of Indigenous peoples and local communities, advancing collective effort, and much more — and the aspiration for enhanced communication and engagement outlined in Section K. Like the GBF itself, we see these elements as inextricably linked. So, too, must be implementation efforts.
To address the most pressing issues of our time, we must find ways of working together — and sharing power and resources as we do so, guided by the spirit of abundance that imbues the natural world.
Resourcing those efforts is only the first step. But it’s the piece most on the minds of many nations today. We hope the advice above is additive to those efforts so that when all nations gather on this issue this fall, there will be a more informed global discussion about how to achieve Target 22 and what resources will be needed to make it happen.
