Climate-nature synergies at COP30 and beyond

COP30, held in Belém in 2025, marked an important step forward in strengthening climate-nature synergies within the United Nations’ efforts to address the climate crisis. For the first time, linkages between climate action, ecosystem protection, and land-use governance were reflected across the four pillars of the conference: the Leaders Summit, negotiations, the Action Agenda, and broader societal mobilization.

Although the conference took place amid a deepening planetary crisis – including intensifying climate change, accelerating biodiversity loss, and land degradation – concrete political and procedural advances helped place the need for integrated policies back at the center of international debate. The continued absence of institutional mechanisms capable of promoting synergies across global climate and nature agendas, however, still constrains systemic action, resulting in duplicative efforts, fragmented financing, and weak alignment in support of national implementation.

In 2024, the COPs of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) adopted decisions to strengthen multilateral coordination and policy coherence. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), however, limited concrete progress was achieved.

In this context, COP30 in the Amazon – the world’s largest tropical forest and one of the planet’s most important carbon and biodiversity reservoirs – reinforced the urgency of connecting climate action, environmental conservation, energy transition, and sustainable development, including the goal of halting and reversing deforestation by 2030. COP30 also elevated climate-nature synergies as a shared political priority among governments, multilateral institutions, and non-state actors.

The outcomes from Belém point to political and procedural advances that may pave the way for more integrated implementation of global environmental agendas in the coming years. The debate initiated at COP30 helps strengthen governance across the Rio Conventions and informs the cycle of international conferences scheduled for 2026, including UNFCCC COP31, UNCCD COP17, and CBD COP17.

 

Read the publication

 

Learn more about this topic in the Strategic Paper 65, Climate-Nature Synergies; from local to global, and in the bulletin Towards a Global Climate and Nature Council: Underpinning the Global Mutirão and Modelling the Future of Governance