Only 10 proposals negotiated at the COP16 Biodiversity Summit had a focus on green skills in the workforce.
This is out of 420 proposals submitted by almost 60 countries at the summit, prompting IEMA to urge for green education, skills and training to be a greater priority.
IEMA (Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment) is the world’s largest membership body for professionals working in the environment and sustainability space. The organisation wrote to the COP16 President Susana Muhamad and the UK Government’s Minister of State for Nature, Mary Creagh, to elevate the importance of green skills.
The urgent call came two years after countries signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the COP15 summit in Montreal, in support of the reversal of global biodiversity decline by the end of the decade. Despite one of the key targets agreed by signatories being “capacity building”, there was a lack of progress in implementing the global framework this year.
IEMA, which represents almost 22,000 environment and sustainability professionals, met with Mary Creagh, ahead of COP16 negotiations, to advocate for green education, skills and training skills in national workforces to successfully deliver “National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans” (NBSAPs).
The UK was among 80 per cent of the countries unable to meet the deadline to publish their NBSAPs ahead of COP16, which concluded over the weekend in Cali, Columbia. Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico produced NBSAPs, while Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 countries to submit plans (the US is not a signatory).
Several countries published new NBSAPs during the summit itself – just after the deadline. This included COP16 host Colombia, as well as Germany, the Netherlands, Iran, Venezuela, Peru, India, Thailand, Tanzania, Vietnam and Argentina.
By the end of the summit, just 44 out of 196 parties – 22 per cent – had devised new biodiversity plans.
IEMA chief executive Sarah Mukherjee MBE attended the summit, calling on global leaders to support IEMA’s #GreenSkillsAtCOP agenda, which will continue at the COP29 Climate Change Summit in Azerbaijan shortly after the conclusion of COP16 negotiations.
Speaking prior to the conference, she 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.”
COP16 ran from Oct 21 to Nov 1st and saw more than 20,000 delegates convene to preserve the planet.
Landmark decisions that were made include the first ever agreement on nature’s genetic data and recognising people of African descent and Indigenous Peoples as key stewards in conservation efforts.
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