Leveraging Systemic Change
Over recent years, our advocacy has helped secure many global policy wins for wetlands. But we are all too aware that the geo-political world is changing dramatically. While some countries are withdrawing from multilateral collaboration and reversing environmental policies, other countries are stepping up on the global stage and acting as champions. Strong national and specifically also sub-national policies will become more critical.
We will adapt our global advocacy to also target relevant non-environmental fora and enhance our work on national and sub-national policies to drive implementation and collectively unlock business action and finance. We will advocate to ensure that government decision making on wetlands is brought within the realms of real political power – such as finance, agriculture, security, and public works. Going one step further, we will advocate for the rights of wetlands from local to global levels.
Businesses are often a major driver of wetland degradation, but they can also be positive and powerful change agents. Within our 12 flagship landscapes, we will focus on companies and sectors that have a high impact or dependency on wetlands. Together we will develop innovative, investable, regenerative wetland-based solutions, which will have a direct impact and serve as incubators.
In coastal wetlands, we will focus on sectors such as coastal engineering and dredging, aquaculture, and fisheries. In peatlands, we will prioritise critical industries like palm oil and peat extraction for fuel and growing media. In freshwater ecosystems, promoting water stewardship in agriculture, mining and water sectors will be crucial. We will then advance these solutions through the three global initiatives and sector platforms to activate companies and their sectors worldwide.
Unlocking public and private finance is key to transformative change. We are already piloting innovative financing tools, such as biodiversity and carbon credits, nature-related bonds, and payment for ecosystem services. We will work with partners to bring these mechanisms to scale and create pipelines of investable landscape propositions to leverage new sources of blended public and private funding for wetlands.
To open the financial floodgates and unleash the hundreds of billions needed to achieve the global goals for wetlands, we will team up with new partners to highlight the economic and financial dependencies of countries and companies on wetlands, advocating for reform of policies, subsidies, and regulations. With our knowledge, we will influence targeted business and financial frameworks and policies. Together, these systemic changes will disincentivize investments and activities that are harmful to wetlands and incentivize wetland-positive action.