As the most democratic gathering of the international conservation community, the IUCN World Conservation Congress has been instrumental in setting the global conservation agenda, representing the collective priorities of States, government agencies, NGOs and Indigenous people’s organisations.
This year’s IUCN Congress, taking place in October in Abu Dhabi, will decide on a set of draft decisions, known as “motions”, that will trigger action on nature loss and other global challenges. Today, 124 of these motions were published, and IUCN Members will be invited to discuss them online starting next month.
A wide range of pressing topics are up for debate, such as emergency action to prevent dangerous climate tipping points by protecting glaciers and forests; measures to explicitly recognise and upscale the role of Indigenous peoples’ sacred sites and languages; and strategies to mainstream conservation into renewable energy projects posing trade-offs for nature.
Measures to combat nature crime and ecocide, promote the rights of nature, and develop a policy on geoengineering are among the issues to be considered. Geoengineering refers to large-scale interventions in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract or mitigate climate change – a field that is currently not consistently and specifically addressed by regulatory or governance frameworks. A draft policy on carbon mitigation calls on States, international agencies, and multilateral climate financing bodies to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem conservation into carbon crediting and trading systems.
Links between conservation and other sectors are also high on the agenda, from fostering nature-positive agriculture and food systems to establishing new alliances with the health sector through the One-health approach and integrating conservation with peace and security to protect the environment in conflict situations.
Every four years, IUCN Members propose critical issues for debate through a unique, open consultative process involving the full IUCN Membership. Once voted on and approved, motions drive policies and action by becoming Resolutions and Recommendations, the core body of IUCN’s policy.
Since IUCN’s founding in 1948, nearly 1,500 Resolutions and Recommendations have been adopted. Collectively, they have contributed to spurring environmental treaties and conventions, supporting Indigenous peoples, and promoting the recognition of linkages between nature conservation and human rights, among other impacts. These constitute IUCN’s most effective and democratic means of influencing conservation matters at species, site, national and global levels.
For a full list of the motions see here.