Highlights

Countries recognize the need to better connect climate and biodiversity ambitions—as reflected in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity—and to align implementation.

Most Country Partnership Frameworks are strongly aligned with global climate agreements but not with global biodiversity agreements or national biodiversity frameworks.

The World Bank Group is not optimizing biodiversity benefits in Country Partnership Frameworks with climate and nature objectives and often not capturing biodiversity-related results. Biodiversity considerations are most notably absent in Country Partnership Frameworks whose portfolios represent an outsized share of land being put under improved management in the Corporate Scorecard.

In Country Climate and Development Reports, the link between biodiversity and climate change is often acknowledged for mitigation purposes. However, recommendations to restore natural habitats to enhance carbon capture and enlarge biodiversity benefits are infrequent. Country Climate and Development Reports also rarely identify the biodiversity risks posed by climate change.

Countries recognize the need to better connect climate and biodiversity ambitions—as reflected in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the CBD—and to align implementation. The need to identify and pursue synergistic solutions between climate and biodiversity goals has been strongly articulated at the COPs and at the Fifteenth United Nations Biodiversity Conference. The World Bank Board has asked management to identify complementary actions, align resource mobilization strategies, and harmonize monitoring and reporting mechanisms for both conventions. In its three Nature and Development Briefs for the Fifteenth United Nations Biodiversity Conference, the World Bank stated that policy makers should incorporate considerations of nature, climate, and development into sector strategies and plans, including national plans for achieving climate mitigation and adaptation goals (World Bank 2022a, 2022b, 2022c). In Unlocking Nature-Smart Development: An Approach Paper on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the Bank Group stated that the country engagement process provides mechanisms to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem services into national development strategies. In the 2021 Joint Statement by the Multilateral Development Banks on Nature, People and Planet, the Bank Group committed to helping clients update their national biodiversity strategies.

As such, we assess the extent to which the Bank Group integrates biodiversity into its CPFs and CCDRs. We assess the most recent CPFs (n = 113) and all 57 disclosed CCDRs. CPFs are the primary strategic document that outlines the Bank Group’s engagement with a member country. CCDRs are designed to help countries prioritize actions to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs), enhance adaptation, and achieve broader development goals.

Country Partnership Frameworks

Most CPFs are strongly aligned with global climate agreements but not with global biodiversity agreements or national biodiversity frameworks. Ninety percent of the 113 most recent CPFs (n = 102) articulate climate priorities, citing nationally determined contributions, the Paris Agreement, or Paris Alignment. However, no CPF refers explicitly to the global biodiversity agreements (the GBF, the CBD, or the Kunming-Montreal and Aichi targets), and only three CPFs (Ghana, Mexico, and Zambia) link Bank Group support to their respective national biodiversity strategies and action plans.1

The Bank Group is not optimizing biodiversity benefits in client engagements with climate and nature objectives and is often not capturing biodiversity-related results. Most CPFs aim to achieve climate change, sustainability, or resilience goals. Eighty-one of the 113 CPFs (72 percent) include high-level outcomes related to climate adaptation, disaster risk management (including the use of nature-based solutions such as mangrove restoration), natural resource management, climate mitigation, and low-carbon growth (figure 3.1). These themes provide opportunities to support biodiversity-positive choices and to help clients capture and report on biodiversity results where they exist. Only 20 CPFs report on biodiversity, most of which were approved after 2022. Eight track forest cover (Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Montenegro, and Panama), and eight track emission reduction from avoided degradation or deforestation (Burkina Faso, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lao PDR, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, and Nepal). Notable CPFs that have strong metrics include Lesotho’s, which tracks natural resource depletion as a percentage of gross national income; Uzbekistan’s, which measures degraded land as a percentage of total land area; and Cambodia’s, Jamaica’s, and Sri Lanka’s, which use the Yale Environmental Performance Index.

Biodiversity considerations are most notably absent in CPFs whose portfolios represent an outsized share of land being put under improved management in the Corporate Scorecard. The Corporate Scorecard tracks about 19.6 million hectares of land under enhanced management or conservation in 18 countries whose most recent CPFs do not articulate, capture, or report on biodiversity.2 This includes 11.7 million hectares of land in the Sahel (Chad, Niger, and Senegal), 7.2 million hectares in Ethiopia, 308,000 hectares in Somalia, 279,884 hectares in Europe and Central Asia (Albania, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, and Tajikistan), and 152,000 hectares in the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The World Bank is infrequently supporting and leveraging analytical work on valuing ecosystem services to inform integrated climate–biodiversity solutions at a national level. Valuing ecosystem services assigns economic, social, and ecological significance to the benefits provided by natural systems. Quantifying ecosystem services helps governments and businesses incorporate environmental costs and benefits into decision-making. Even though the World Bank has supported natural wealth accounting in a few countries through its WAVES (Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services) program (2010–20), which often led to biodiversity-positive policy decisions (especially in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala),3 and even though the World Bank has expanded this type of analytical work to 31 countries, we only identified five CPFs that articulate how World Bank support for natural capital accounting has informed sustainable development planning: Cameroon, Lao PDR, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Zambia.

Figure 3.1. Country Partnership Frameworks with Climate and Nature-Related High-Level Objectives

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Figure 3.1. Country Partnership Frameworks with Climate and Nature-Related High-Level Objectives

Source: Independent Evaluation Group.

Note: Individual subobjectives were categorized into themes based on their dominant focus, while recognizing that there is overlap across these themes. CPF = Country Partnership Framework; HLO = high-level outcome.

Country Climate and Development Reports

Most CCDRs identify and address the need to use and conserve countries’ biodiversity-rich natural ecosystems to achieve national climate mitigation goals. Eighty percent of all CCDRs disclosed at the time of this review (57, covering 69 countries) identify and recommend that the World Bank help conserve natural ecosystems, especially forests, to support countries’ climate mitigation goals. Most recommend addressing deforestation, which is often caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion and livestock systems, to ensure that standing carbon sinks are not depleted and unable to contribute to meeting GHG reduction aims. There are missed opportunities in desert ecosystems, like in Jordan and Morocco, and in small island developing states in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States to support terrestrial forests in addition to ocean resources. A growing number of CCDRs recommend using and conserving marine ecosystems as carbon sinks, including in Ghana, Maldives, Mozambique, and members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.

Only half of the CCDRs recommend conserving biodiversity to achieve adaptation goals. These CCDRs identify and recommend ways to conserve forests and strengthen protected areas to exploit nontimber value chains and develop ecotourism for the benefit of rural livelihoods, especially for resource-dependent communities. Less frequently, other CCDRs focus on increasing the sustainability of agriculture to boost productivity or on supporting sustainable fisheries management, including through blue economy approaches that recommend developing marine protected areas to benefit both fisheries and tourism. Several CCDRs also propose nature-based solutions, including the conservation of mangroves and wetlands and the enhancement of coastal zones.

Fewer CCDRs recommend restorative activities to enlarge mitigation opportunities while enhancing biodiversity benefits. Of the 45 CCDRs that recommend using existing ecosystems as carbon sinks, only 14 recommend habitat restoration. Many other CCDRs recommend tree planting for carbon capture and local economic benefits but do not articulate whether they recommend native or exotic fast-growing species, the latter of which may run counter to biodiversity aims. Although restoration is not always possible—due to severely degraded areas not being capable of recovery or due to climate change and shifting biomes, for example—restoration is typically preferable because it maintains biodiversity and ecosystem stability (Busch et al. 2024). Other forms of natural restoration, such as wetland restoration, are highly effective for flood control and water purification. Grassland restoration is cheaper than afforestation and supports biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

CCDRs also infrequently diagnose the risks that climate change poses to biodiversity. One-third (19 out of 57) of the CCDRs explicitly identify and address such risks. The diagnosis of risks is absent in many of the CPFs that look toward countries’ natural forests to support their nationally determined contributions. These risks are also undiagnosed in many countries with low resilience to climate change and a high reliance on biodiversity, such as those in Africa. Comprehensive discussions on climate change risks to forest ecosystems were found in the CCDRs for Romania, Senegal, and the Western Balkans. The Independent Evaluation Group’s evaluation on the blue economy also found that CCDRs only partially identify the risks posed by climate change to marine and coastal areas, with scant reference to the impact of emerging marine sectors on the coastal and marine environment.