From 8-10 October, Sydney played host to the world’s first Global Nature Positive Summit (GNPS). A vital step towards accelerating collective action to drive investment in nature and strengthen activities to protect and repair our environment. Over 1,000 leaders representing First Nations groups, government, eNGOs, corporate sectors and research institutes from around the world attended the two-day event.

Panel sessions highlighted the systemic changes needed to our political and financial sectors to set the world on a path to being nature positive by 2030–our commitment under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

In the lead up to the GNPS, the Katoomba Group, a global network of people working to mobilise public funding and private capital to conserve and restore nature, ran their own summit. The event was held to take stock of how far the network had come over the past 25 years, celebrate wins and lessons learned, and map out where we need to go from here.

Here are some of my key takeaways from both events:  

• We cannot ever hope to achieve Nature Positive by 2030 until we stop destroying our environment much faster than we are repairing it.
• It’s a no brainer – traditional ecological knowledge needs to be infused throughout practice. It was heartening to see First Nations Peoples not only having a seat at the summit table, but at the head of it for a change.
• It’s time to move from rhetoric to action. We have enough data and research. We know what needs to be done. Now is the moment for us to be bold and comfortable with taking risks – we can’t wait until it’s perfect. As Barry Hunter, CEO of North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance put it: ‘Less talk, less hot air, more action!’
• Let’s move away from siloed thinking. Everything is interconnected. Nature positive and carbon neutral is a single topic. And achieving it will require systemic political and financial change.
• Time to ditch the jargon. Let’s speak in a language that others outside of the sector understand. An example from a presenter from the UN Bank captures this perfectly. When she spoke to a group about Nature Based Solutions, they responded, ‘No, we don’t do that. We use mangroves.’
• The financial sector is largely environmentally illiterate whilst the environmental sector is financially illiterate – we need to bridge that gap.
• It’s not an easy thing for many in the conservation sector to stomach, but to save nature and bring in the private investment we desperately need, we have to put a value on it. Both figures for the cost of nature loss and a value for the ecosystem services on which we depend.
• Nature is currently economically valued more highly when it is dead – a tree is regarded as valuable only when it is chopped down, a fish worth more when it is on someone’s plate. How do we get people to invest in keeping nature alive instead?

A national approach to nature positive restoration in Australia

In the lead up to the world’s first Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney, GER alongside fellow members of the Restoration Decade Alliance released a position statement to help guide Australia on a path towards achieving its commitment to Target 2 of the Global Biodiversity Framework – to have 30% of the world’s degraded land and water areas under effective restoration by 2030.” ‘A national approach to nature positive restoration in Australia’ highlights ways that governments, industries and communities can help to achieve this crucial target and to ensure that nature repair far surpasses nature loss. Click here to read the position statement. 

We will continue to work to influence key policy and legislation that ends nature degradation and loss and smooths the path for Australia to meet its biodiversity and climate goals. Now more than ever, this requires community-led conservation efforts like the Great Eastern Ranges that connect, protect and regenerate our natural systems at scale supported through catalytic public-private partnerships and funding.

By Tandi Spencer-Smith