5.5.2022
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 184/131 Thursday 21 October 2021
56.
Stresses that climate change and environmental degradation increasingly interact with the drivers of human displacement; expresses its support for the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM Excom) Task Force on Displacement, and calls on it to step up its activities and to ensure that it is more inclusive of least developed countries and small island developing states; calls for a greater focus on climate-induced displacement in future COPs;
Nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches to climate change
57.
Recalls that climate change is one of the main direct drivers of biodiversity loss and land degradation, and that biodiversity loss and climate change are interlinked and exacerbate each other, representing equal threats to the planet; underlines that the negative effects of climate change on nature and biodiversity, on ecosystems, and on water availability, oceans and food security are projected to become critical in the decades to come; reiterates that the strict conservation and the restoration of high-carbon ecosystems, such as peatlands, wetlands, rangelands, and of blue carbon ecosystems, such as salt marshes, seagrasses and mangroves, and intact forests is a response option with an immediate impact, and that it offers a wide range of mitigation and adaptation benefits; whereas when degraded or destroyed, blue carbon ecosystems emit the carbon they have stored for centuries into the atmosphere and the ocean, which then becomes a source of GHG emissions; highlights that some measures that could mitigate the climate crisis could be detrimental to biodiversity, and underlines the need for the climate crisis and the biodiversity loss crisis to be tackled together; proposes therefore a properly funded joint CBD-UNFCCC work programme to identify and encourage synergistic action;
58.
Stresses that despite growing consensus at the UNFCCC and the CBD on the need for integrated action at country and local levels to tackle both the biodiversity and the climate crises together, nature-based solutions are still absent in many national climate pledges and country strategies; considers that a multi-stakeholder platform on nature-based solutions could help strengthen synergies across multilateral international conventions on biodiversity and climate change, and enable the achievement of the UN SDGs;
59.
Stresses the need for synergies between the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and climate action for both mitigation and adaptation;
60.
Recalls also the crucial role played by biodiversity in enabling humans to combat and adapt to global warming and increase their level of resilience; stresses that ecosystem-based approaches, as established under the CBD, and nature-based solutions take advantage of the potential of nature and biodiversity to reduce GHG emissions and to help us adapt to the impacts of climate change, that they are win-win solutions that involve protecting, restoring and sustainably managing and enhancing ecosystem services and functions which address society’s challenges and promote human well-being; underlines that nature-based solutions can be most effective when planned for longevity and not only narrowly focused on rapid carbon sequestration (22);
61.
Welcomes the COP26 Presidency’s initiative to launch the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade Dialogue, which will bring together key countries exporting agricultural products and the countries consuming these products to discuss how to make this process more sustainable; recalls its positions detailed in its resolution on an EU legal framework to halt and reverse EU-driven global deforestation (23), which should be incorporated into the EU contribution; calls on the Commission to urgently present a proposal for an EU legal framework based on mandatory due diligence that ensures that value chains are sustainable and that products or commodities placed on the EU market do not result in or derive from deforestation, forest degradation, ecosystem conversion or degradation or human rights violations; notes that such an EU legal framework should also be extended to cover high-carbon stock and biodiversity-rich ecosystems other than forests, such as marine and coastal ecosystems, wetlands, peatlands and savannahs, so as to avoid pressure being shifted to these ecosystems;
(22) (23)
IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop report on biodiversity and climate change, 10 June 2021.
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2020)0285.