The second edition of the IUCN Leaders Forum was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 11 – 13 October 2023, under the theme Global goals for nature: tracking progress, financing success.

 

Global goals to protect and restore nature were agreed at the recent COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. The IUCN Leaders Forum enabled participants from different stakeholder groups to discuss the ‘what’ and ‘how’ in order to achieve these goals, and help mobilise relevant groups into action. In addition, the Leaders Forum offered a platform to agree on measuring, monitoring and reporting, and to tackle critical questions around financing the global goals for nature, with a view to helping governments and the private sector to fulfil their obligations.

 

During the forum, a panel event explored the unique contribution cities can make to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The panel discussed different approaches to help cities to implement and scale up their commitment and action plans to deliver integrated solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. This includes a presentation on a new Nature-positive Urban Development Umbrella Program that aims to scale up financing for nature-positive urban development to support cities in meeting the ambitions set out in the GBF. The Program will work with existing initiatives, with a focus on more strongly linking the portfolio development of development banks and the private sector to supporting nature-positive investment. In this regard, the Program supported a better integration of the policy support and technical assistance with investment.

 

 

City leaders, representatives from Multilateral Development Banks, global initiatives and the private sector will explore how to unlock financing to support cities to pursue nature positive development pathway and contribute to achieving the GBF targets.