Growing evidence indicates that addressing the twin challenge of the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis requires greater synergy and integration across these two sectors, and for them to be treated as two components of the same challenge. Africa should take a strong leadership role in the negotiations to finalise the CBD Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in 2022, to ensure greater relevance for Africa and that both the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are addressed simultaneously. This requires that the final GBF goals are evidence-based and focused on achieving both nature-positive and climate-positive outcomes. Achieving these objectives will also result in people-positive outcomes – but only if there is far greater inclusion of communities and groups directly affected by policy interventions from the outset. In finalising the GBF this year, the use of a nature-based solutions lens should be explicitly built into the GBF goals to ensure a triple win of climate-, biodiversity- and people-positive outcomes.
