It’s a triple COP year: What that means and why it matters for business leaders

The world is almost halfway through the famed decade of action. Unfortunately, each year, the likelihood of tackling key goals, such as limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, seems even more daunting. And with global public debt hitting the $100-trillion-dollar mark, some countries might rethink investments in everything from reducing emissions to protecting nature.

However, 2024 presents a unique opportunity to galvanize global action on various climate goals. Importantly, three COPs on biodiversity, climate and land will take place this year.

The UN organizes these high-level conferences for environmental action, which convene leaders to help negotiate and define ways forward to control the climate crisis.

Leaders in the private sector can play a key role in driving action through both voluntary actions and pressures for government policy reform. The summits’ timing emphasizes the interconnection between these issues, guiding leaders to the necessary steps to progress on key goals.

In 1992, governments gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to discuss the interlinked challenges of climate, land and biodiversity loss. This summit was the origin of three separate global agreements known as the “Rio Conventions”:

These agreements ensure that action on land, climate and biodiversity work together to restore the Earth’s balance with nature.

The conventions align to sidestep redundant work and share information. While each summit stands alone, they overlap, including through the importance of nature-based solutions – which prevent erosion, ensure a stable climate and protect animal and plant life – and society’s role in driving clean, sustainable technologies to reduce emissions and pressure on biodiversity loss.

COP16 - The UN Convention on Biological Diversity

When: 21 October-1 November 2024.

What it is: This biennial summit, which emerged from a 1992 convention, steers its development and implementation. This year, it will be held in Cali, Colombia.

This year’s focus: COP16 will be the first Biodiversity COP since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP15 in December 2022 in Montreal, Canada, which includes concrete measures to put 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030. This year’s summit will review progress towards implementing that biodiversity plan, which includes four goals for 2050 and 23 targets by 2030. Those targets will require coherent and effective national policies.

Outcomes: While some experts have questioned the level of political ambition shown at the summit, there were some notable agreements including:

COP29 – The UN Convention on Climate

When: 11-22 November 2024.

What it is: This summit has been held annually since 1995. It has been one of the most well-known in the public sphere in recent years thanks to commitments such as the landmark Paris Agreement, signed at COP21, which binds signatories to cut their emissions. This year’s summit will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Notable this year: Some call this year's COP29 the “finance COP” as countries must align on a new finance target. Trillions of dollars are required to ensure countries can drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while protecting lives and livelihoods from climate change’s worsening impacts.

COP16 – The UN Convention to Combat Desertification

When: 2-13 December 2024.

What it is: This biennial summit aims to combat desertification and the impacts of drought, achieve a land degradation-neutral world, and coordinate action to restore degraded lands and monitor degradation. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will host this year’s summit.

Notable this year: COP16 will be the largest UN land conference yet and organizers say it “represents a moonshot moment” to raise global ambition for land and drought resilience. It will be held in the Middle East and North Africa Region for the first time, an area with a keen understanding of the impacts of drought and land degradation.

Every COP delivers value in itself but with three taking place in rapid succession this year, it marks a significant opportunity to derive even more value from these global meetings of the public, private and international sectors and to highlight synergies across each of these issues.

Here are three key ways the triple COP year could make a difference, according to experts speaking at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Meetings (SDIM) session Putting COPs Pledges into Practice in September 2024:

The three COPs will drive home the necessary coaction across issues. For example, climate action can slow biodiversity loss and desertification. Limiting deforestation can help mitigate land degradation and biodiversity loss while tackling emissions. Understanding these connections can fuel shared action.

The synergies across the summits are evident, said Maria Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development and the president of this year’s biodiversity COP.

Muhamad said: “We hope all these stakeholders will [raise their voices] and we can create a more open process.”

Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, warned against siloes at SDIM this September and how they stand in the way of environmental action.

“You cannot just solve the issue of biodiversity or climate alone or land degradation, or you have to have a very coherent view,” said Thiaw.

This holistic approach can be more effective as progress is fuelled across these interconnected issues.

“Any good investment in renewable energy will have a positive impact on land. We will have a positive impact on biodiversity. Any reduction [by firms of their] footprint in terms of forests will have a positive impact on biodiversity; will have a positive impact on land and water,” added Thiaw.

Understanding this is key for policymakers.

“Too often, a lack of coordination leads to contradictory policies and market signals resulting in zero net progress from an environmental and sustainable development perspective,” he added before concluding, “It is important to have a holistic view so that you do not destroy with the left hand what you are trying to build with the right.”

Having three COPs in one year can create momentum for critical conversations and amplify issues, especially in the private sector.

Putting topics such as biodiversity and desertification on the radar of business leaders is particularly important, explained Sumant Sinha, chairman and chief executive officer of ReNew.

He said: “Right now, [business leaders] tend to focus a lot more on the climate COP, rather than on the land COP or the desertification or biodiversity COP … I think that today the corporate sector, if you ask me honestly, is not as focused on land use issues and biodiversity issues as much as we are on the climate side, where we are still struggling to catch up.”

He continued: “We also need to involve ourselves much more in the other two COPs as well, because those are equally important also and I think that the corporate sector is actually even further behind in getting involved in these two other COPs.”

As leaders representing the different conventions wrote in Agenda last month, the issues underpinning the Rio Conventions are merely different expressions of one planetary crisis, one that is made all the more challenging by crises of poverty, overconsumption and overuse of nature.

The conversations in the coming weeks are critical to staying on target with key global goals and ensuring accountability for economies worldwide engaged in the business of protecting and restoring planetary health.

Leaders must seize the opportunity to drive these conversations in order to achieve these goals.