Experts: global environmental goals are within reach, if national agendas don’t get in the way

International conventions are not failing due to flawed frameworks but because of political obstruction and the prioritization of short-term national interests over collective action, says Dr. Robert Nasi, the Chief Operating Officer of CIFOR-ICRAF and the Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

“The failure of global environmental protection lies not in the international conventions but in their implementation. These conventions provide sophisticated frameworks based on scientific understanding and international cooperation. The tragic gap between their objectives and our environmental reality reflects not institutional inadequacy but political failure,” says Dr. Nasi.

Dr. Nasi points to striking examples of political obstruction across the globe. Despite the UN Biodiversity framework providing comprehensive biodiversity protection guidelines, governments allocate over $500 billion annually to harmful subsidies, as revealed in the World Bank’s 2023 report on biodiversity finance. Implementation of the Climate Agreement has been delayed, and fossil fuel lobbying has succeeded in major economies prioritizing industrial interests over emissions reductions.

“The path forward requires addressing these political failures directly. Only by building stronger domestic constituencies for environmental protection, confronting obstructionist interests, and creating real accountability for implementation failures can we hope to reverse our planet’s environmental decline. The conventions have given us the tools; we must now find the political will to use them,” says Dr. Nasi. “The future of our planet depends not on better conventions, but on better politics.”