- This commentary by Robert Nasi, Chief Operating Officer of CIFOR-ICRAF and a leading forest ecologist, and Aida Greenbury, a sustainability expert and environmental advocate, explores the inefficiencies of fragmented environmental governance under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
- The authors argue that separating these conventions perpetuates administrative inefficiencies, competition for resources, and project fragmentation, hindering the ability to address interconnected crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation holistically.
- They call for a unified funding mechanism and governance structure to streamline efforts, reduce redundancies, and facilitate multi-benefit projects, emphasizing the urgent need for systemic change to effectively tackle the environmental challenges threatening Earth’s future.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
There have been 29 United Nations Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC COPs) so far. The first COP meeting was held in Germany in 1995, and the 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties is taking place in Azerbaijan this year. We all remember the euphoria surrounding the two most successful COPs: COP3 in Kyoto in 1997, which delivered the first major international climate agreement to set binding emission reduction targets for industrialized countries, and COP21 in Paris in 2015, which resulted in the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty to limit global warming to below 2°C.
Yet almost 30 years later, as the number of observer-participants, including lobbyists and carbon traders at COPs, increases, so does the Earth’s temperature. For the first time, the globe exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to the pre-industrial average in 2023, according to the European climate agency Copernicus. On the biodiversity front, despite the UN’s report that the area of the planet’s land and oceans under formal protections has increased by 0.5% since 2020, the Zoological Society of London and the World Wildlife Fund reported a 73% decline in the size of vertebrate animal populations since 1970. At the COP16 Biodiversity Summit, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature also reported that 38% of the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction.
The target of $100 billion per year in climate finance was achieved in 2022, but how much of the distributed funds has made a real impact? Where are the disconnects?
The False Trinity: The Illogical Separation of Earth’s Environmental Funding Mechanisms
In the face of accelerating environmental crises, the international community continues to maintain an artificially fragmented approach to environmental governance and funding through three separate UN conventions: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This fragmentation represents not just an administrative inconvenience but a fundamental misunderstanding of ecological systems and a serious impediment to effective environmental action.
The separation of these conventions reflects a dated, compartmentalized view of environmental challenges that contradicts our scientific understanding of Earth’s systems. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation are not discrete problems but deeply interconnected phenomena that form a complex web of cause and effect. When we lose biodiversity, we reduce ecosystem resilience to climate change. When climate change accelerates, it exacerbates land degradation. When land degrades, it releases stored carbon and destroys habitats. These are not three separate crises – they are one crisis viewed through three lenses. Protecting a tropical forest simultaneously preserves biodiversity hotspots, maintains crucial carbon sinks, and prevents soil erosion and land degradation. Alongside this, we must also ensure the consultation, involvement, and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.
Yet our current system approaches this single ecosystem through three separate bureaucratic frameworks, each with its own funding mechanisms, reporting requirements, and administrative overhead. This is akin to having three different doctors independently treating a patient’s heart, lungs, and blood vessels without speaking to each other – a practice we would never accept in medicine.
This triplication of effort creates several critical problems. First, there is competition for limited resources. In a world of finite environmental funding, these conventions effectively compete against each other for resources. Donors face multiple funding requests for interconnected issues, leading to decision paralysis or arbitrary allocation choices. This competition can result in critical underfunding of some areas, while others receive disproportionate attention based on political rather than ecological priorities. Second, administrative inefficiencies waste resources. Maintaining three parallel bureaucratic structures consumes resources that could otherwise be directed to actual environmental protection. Finally, developing nations, often those most in need of environmental funding, must navigate three separate application processes, reporting requirements, and monitoring systems. This creates an unnecessary administrative burden that diverts precious human resources from actual implementation work.
The allocation shortcuts arising from these critical issues can result in funding being directed to existing large NGO partners, which may duplicate efforts and claim or hijack the progress of smaller organizations that are likely making a real difference on the ground.
At the implementation level, the separation of these conventions also creates significant challenges, including project fragmentation, missed synergies, and insufficient resource allocation. Projects that could deliver multiple benefits are often forced into artificial categories to fit specific funding windows. A reforestation project, for example, might need to be split into separate proposals for climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and land restoration, even though it serves all three purposes. The lack of coordination between conventions also means that opportunities for synergistic action are often missed. Projects funded under one convention might even unknowingly undermine the objectives of another.
Donors often use the term ‘nested projects’ for activities they like to support. But a nested project cannot be created without close coordination between donors and alignment among the three different frameworks. Nested projects can only be implemented if we adopt a landscape approach where all issues and stakeholders are mapped, there’s a clear coordinating body, and decisions are made with proper consultations among all parties involved.
The maintenance of separate conventions often serves political rather than environmental objectives. It allows countries and politicians to appear active in environmental protection while avoiding comprehensive commitments and without necessarily increasing overall environmental funding. It also allows bureaucrats to protect their turf and maintain control over their specific domains. The different monitoring and reporting systems also allow misuse of funding, which can harm carbon, biodiversity, and community rights.
The solution to this institutional fragmentation is clear but politically challenging. First, we need a unified funding mechanism. Such a mechanism should recognize the interconnected nature of environmental challenges, streamline application and reporting requirements, reduce administrative overhead, and facilitate integrated project design and implementation. Second, we need to establish a unified governance structure that brings together expertise from all three domains to ensure coherent policymaking and develop implementation frameworks that encourage multi-benefit projects and reward synergistic approaches.
The Earth does not recognize our administrative boundaries or bureaucratic distinctions; neither should our response to environmental crises. The time has come to abandon this inefficient and ineffective approach in favor of a unified, coherent response to environmental challenges. The stakes are too high, and our resources too limited, to continue maintaining artificial divisions in our fight to protect the Earth’s systems.
The question is not whether we should integrate these conventions and their funding mechanisms, but how quickly we can overcome institutional inertia to do so. Every day we maintain this fragmented approach is another day we handicap our ability to effectively address the environmental crisis that threatens our planet’s future.
One thing is clear: the current fragmented approach to environmental governance and funding is not working. Our planet’s increasing temperature and the dire state of biodiversity today have provided enough evidence.
About the authors:
Robert Nasi is a distinguished forest ecologist and the Chief Operating Officer of CIFOR-ICRAF, an organization formed by the merger of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in 2019. He has been with CIFOR since 1999, holding various research and management positions, including Director General from 2017, during which he led the successful merger with ICRAF.
Aida Greenbury is a sustainability expert and environmental advocate, widely recognized for her work in the forestry and corporate sustainability sectors. She is best known for her efforts to promote sustainable practices in the pulp and paper industry, as well as her leadership in addressing deforestation and climate change. Currently she is working with several reputable organizations, including the Indonesian Oil Palm Smallholders Union, the World Bioeconomy Forum and Mongabay.
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