Presentation short abstract

Exploring the controversies around CBD's 2022 GBF negociations, this communication highlights how the integration of Nature-based Solutions in that agreement has become a symbolic battle between actors trying to institutionnalize different framings of climate and biodiversity policy integration.

Presentation long abstract

Despite broad agreement on the importance of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for addressing climate and biodiversity crises, integrating NbS into multilateral environmental agreement has become highly contested. Building on scholarship examining conflicts in global biodiversity governance (Corson et al., 2014; Campbell et al., 2014), this communication analyzes this controversy through the elaboration of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted under the CBD in 2022. While some states (EU, UK) and several NGOs sought to institutionalize NbS by securing their inclusion in the GBF, others—Brazil, South Africa and critical NGOs—worked to delegitimize this effort. Although policy entrepreneurs achieved partial institutionalization, it relied on an expansive and ambiguous framing of climate–biodiversity integration and remained contested.

This communication examines tensions surrounding NbS in the GBF, how actors reframed the concept, and the political work undertaken to embed NbS in the agreement. By analyzing NbS politicization within the CBD, we contribute to growing social-science research on NbS politics at the international level (Melanidis & Hagerman, 2022; Tozer et al., 2022; Qi & Dauvergne, 2022). The analysis draws on GBF negotiation reports and ten interviews with state and NGO participants conducted between 2022 and 2024.

Disputes around NbS reflect competing framing efforts (Benford & Snow, 2000; van Hulst & Yanow, 2016) over the meaning of climate–biodiversity integration. NbS proponents follow IUCN’s framing, presenting integration as a technical issue NbS can address. Opponents instead frame it as social and political, involving environmental justice, sovereignty and finance inequities issues. Consequently, GBF decisions reflect power relations rather than consensus.