Critical gap looming at COP16 Biodiversity Summit with lack of focus on “green skills” across over 400 proposals up for negotiation

Monday 21st October 2024

With around 420 proposals put forward by almost 60 countries to be negotiated at the COP16 Biodiversity Summit starting in Cali, Colombia tomorrow – just 10 have a focus on building capacity for green skills in national workforces.

The world’s largest membership body for environment and sustainability professionals, IEMA, has written to the COP16 President Susana Muhamad and the UK Government’s Minister of State for Nature Mary Creagh, urging them to make green education, skills and training a bigger priority at negotiations.

 

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It comes two years after the historic signing of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the COP15 summit in Montreal – aimed at reversing the decline of biodiversity around the world by 2030. “Capacity building” was one of the key targets amongst the 23 agreed by countries signing the framework.

It comes as the vast majority of countries – including the United Kingdom – are set to miss the deadline to publish their “National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans” (NBSAPs) ahead of COP16.

Ahead of negotiations in Colombia, the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) which represents almost 22,000 environment and sustainability professionals, met with the UK’s Nature Minister Mary Creagh, to advocate for the integration of green education, skills and training skills into national workforces in order to deliver NBSAPs.

IEMA chief executive Sarah Mukherjee MBE will be in Colombia for the COP16 Biodiversity Summit calling on global leaders to support IEMA’s #GreenSkillsAtCOP agenda, which continues at the COP29 Climate Change Summit that starts in Baku, Azerbaijan just 10 days after the conclusion of negotiations in Cali.

Sarah Mukherjee MBE, CEO of IEMA, said: “Getting to a healthy planet is magical thinking without appropriate education, skills and training.

“Currently this is the critical gap in the global response to the climate and biodiversity breakdowns.

“Target 20 in the Global Biodiversity Framework rightly recognises the need to prioritise capacity building and a crucial aspect in the delivery of each national biodiversity action plan should be ensuring that they have a workforce with the appropriate skills, knowledge and expertise in place.

“Yet a thorough commitment to green skills has so far been conspicuous by its absence.

“Only a handful of countries have so far summitted their national action plans to restore biodiversity. So the silver lining here, is that we still have the opportunity to influence outcomes.

“We have a growing and broad coalition of partners that are urging global leaders to ensure there is a focus on building capacity for green education, skills, and training, to ensure every country has a workforce that can deliver on their biodiversity and climate targets.”

Around 14,000 delegates are set to converge on Cali in Colombia for COP16 – the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity – which runs from 21 October to 1 November.

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The Biodiversity COP – A primer on the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference 2024

This COP16 Explainer set out what to expect at this year's Convention on Biological Diversity in Cali, Colombia. We also detail the key outcomes from the previous COP15 conference in Montreal and what IEMA would like to see emerge from the COP16 negotiations.

The guide also explains the key targets amongst the 23 that were agreed by countries at the last COP summit, including the need to strengthen capacity building, which is the focus of IEMA's #GreenSkillsAtCOP campaign.

COP16 Explained