Oxford Researchers at COP30

The Nature-based Solutions team represented The Agile Initiative, Nature-Based Solutions Initiative, and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment - University of Oxford at COP30 in Belém. The event offered a crucial opportunity to spotlight the critical role of tropical ecosystems and the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) who care for them.

The team's key hopes were to emphasise:

• Biodiversity at the heart of climate action: protecting and restoring ecosystems as essential for both mitigation and adaptation.
• Rights and equity in stewardship: ensuring Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure rights, finance and authority.
• Joined-up governance: aligning the climate, biodiversity and land conventions so their goals reinforce each other.
• Ethics in delivery: embedding the Global Ethical Stocktake as a compass for just and integrated implementation.

The side event, 'From trade-offs to synergies: aligning climate and biodiversity policies', was held during what several speakers described as a significant milestone – the first climate COP to take place in the Amazon. It aimed to bridge the divide between climate and biodiversity policy by exploring ways to align the efforts of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Speakers from science and policy stress that neither can succeed alone, urging collaboration, better data, and funding to bridge divides and protect both ecosystems and the climate. In a first panel on translating scientific understanding into concrete national examples, particularly from Brazil, Nathalie Seddon, Senior Research Fellow at Wadham, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford and Founding Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative (NbSI), called for an integrated vision grounded in both science and moral responsibility. She warned against “industrializing the biosphere in the name of cooling the planet” and urged collaboration with Indigenous and local communities.

Professor Seddon's policy brief, 'Aligning Climate and Nature with Justice - Five Priorities for COP30', co-authored with colleagues, Harriet Bulkeley and Melissa Leach, set out five priorities for governments at COP30:

1. Join up the global goals — align climate, biodiversity, and land agendas.
2. Track what really matters — trust, care, and fairness alongside carbon.
3. Keep nature finance open and equitable.
4. Support Indigenous and local leadership directly.
5. Build shared decision-making and accountability.

These are practical steps toward an integrated, ethical response to the planetary crisis.

Prof Seddon and Dr Aline Soterroni, whom we thank for these photos, took part in the People’s March in Belém, which Prof Seddon described as one of the most powerful and humbling experiences of her life: 'It was a powerful reminder that COP30 is not unfolding in an abstract venue, but in a living place, held in relationship by peoples who have cared for it over millennia – and who are still risking their lives to defend it.'

While at COP30, our Senior Research Fellow, Prof Nathalie Seddon, shared her thoughts on what the trees would say if they could speak: slow down, listen, and honour the interdependence of nature. Her full interview with Levison Wood is available to watch on WaterBear.

There has been some encouraging news from COP30, including that the Government of Colombia has announced that its entire Amazonian biome – around 48 million hectares – will be off-limits to new oil and large-scale mining. At the end of the first week of COP30, Nature-based Solutions Iniative shared their reflections on it and their hopes for the second week: