The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that was adopted in December 2022 has set ambitious collective goals on reversing the loss of biodiversity and degradation of nature. With four overarching goals and 19 quite ambitious targets there is enough to do for States (and other actors). Against the backdrop of the overall failure to achieve the Aichi targets set for 2020 under the CBD, much focus was given to the follow-up and review arrangements in the negotiations. These were upgraded to a limited extent with a visible inspiration from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (PA) and its ‘ambition mechanism’. The GBF is to be accompanied by a ‘synchronized and cyclical system’ of planning, monitoring, reporting and review that includes: Parties submitting revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), Parties reporting on national implementation; and regular global review of collective progress the outcome of which Parties may then be informed by in future revisions of NBSAPs and their implementation.

This paper explores the conceptual starting points for regular self-reflection by States in relation to their responsibility towards globally agreed goals as required by these two ambition mechanisms. The main objective is to elaborate on the components of the role of states’ capacity for (self-)reflexivity in complying with the procedural obligations under the GBF. The paper conceptualizes reflexive capacity based on but expanding from the concept of ecological reflexivity in literature; elaborates on the specific reflexive capacity that States need to acquire to engage meaningfully in the cyclical system of the GBF; and lastly explores possible national and transnational avenues (agents and strategies) for strengthening such capacity. The conceptual analysis will be supported with initial empirical data from the study of the recently concluded PA cycle. It is hoped that these preliminary reflections on States’ self-reflexivity in relation to global nature goals can contribute to discussing future research agendas for understanding the (lack of) implementation of the GBF and more broadly its role for transformative change.

How to cite: Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, S.: Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: Exploring the role of building States’ (self-)reflexive capacity, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-354, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-354, 2026.

Ensuring just and effective implementation of the GBF requires understanding not only the agreed targets and indicators, but also how the monitoring architecture that operationalises them has taken shape. This work presents an empirically grounded account of how this architecture was assembled between 2023 and 2025 and identifies key attention points for experts and practitioners engaged in biodiversity governance.

The analysis combines a four week multi-sited ethnography at COP16 (Cali, 2024; Rome, 2025), with virtual ethnography from 35 online gatherings on biodiversity metrics, finance, and reporting (e.g. UNEP-FI, TNFD, SBTN). This is complemented by 22 semi-structured interviews with negotiators, multilateral experts, natural and social scientists, Indigenous representatives, NGOs and financial actors, as well as document analysis of CBD texts, indicator guidance, SEEA and TNFD materials, national biodiversity strategies, and reports from major organisations developing biodiversity metrics. Analytically, the study focuses on moments where categories, standards and methodological choices were negotiated or recalibrated, revealing how the monitoring system is stabilised in practice.

Findings show that although the Monitoring Framework indicators are agreed, their implementation depends on broader decisions: which methodologies become defaults, which data sources are prioritised, how information is validated, and which expert communities shape technical guidance. These choices tend to favour globally standardised biophysical metrics, making it difficult for relational, cultural or territorial dimensions - central to many Indigenous Peoples, local communities and their epistemic allies - to be integrated in practice. The frequently invoked idea of a “common language” supports coordination but also narrows the range of perspectives considered legitimate, creating an impression of consensus that masks important differences in how nature is understood and governed.

This diagnosis allows us to propose areas of attention: making fuller use of existing flexibilities in reporting to incorporate social, governance and IPLC-relevant information; designing guidance, capacity-building and, validation processes that examine underlying methodological assumptions and support plurality; and fostering interdisciplinary and cross-actor spaces where experts and diverse knowledge holders can review how monitoring tools shape what becomes visible and actionable. These steps can enhance justice, credibility and effectiveness within the GBF’s existing monitoring architecture.

How to cite: Alvarez Blanes, E.: What Becomes Counted: Understanding the Construction of the GBF Monitoring Architecture to Strengthen a Just and Effective Implementation, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-665, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-665, 2026.

The adoption of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at CBD COP15 in 2022 marks a pivotal moment in global conservation governance. For the first time, the Convention explicitly references concepts aligned with Rights of Nature (RoN) approaches, notably in Section C and Targets 14 and 19(f). Rights of Nature, now represented in nearly 600 initiatives across 56 countries (Eco-jurisprudence Monitor), is an expanding legal, social and political movement that challenges anthropocentric governance and dominant extractive economic systems. RoN frameworks recognise nature as possessing intrinsic value, while also reflecting relational worldviews, particularly those of Indigenous Peoples, that understand humans as part of, rather than separate from, the living world.

This paper argues that RoN approaches offer critical tools for the just, inclusive and effective implementation of the GBF. Evidence from emerging jurisprudence, including landmark cases such as Ecuador’s Los Cedros case, demonstrates how RoN-based governance can strengthen environmental decision-making, support ecological recovery and safeguard the rights and wellbeing of both nature and human communities. Despite the GBF’s acknowledgement of diverse value systems, current monitoring, reporting and NBSAP processes do not yet provide mechanisms to meaningfully integrate intrinsic or relational ecological values, nor to capture progress arising from RoN initiatives.

Drawing on comparative case studies from Ecuador, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, this research examines the extent to which RoN principles are reflected in national biodiversity governance and monitoring frameworks. Lessons learned are used to propose pathways for enhancing GBF implementation, including: participatory and rights-based development of NBSAPs; reporting instruments that recognise RoN governance innovations; and the development of socio-ecological indicators capable of reflecting ecological integrity, relational values, and nature’s intrinsic rights.

By positioning RoN as a governance approach that can operationalise the transformative ambition of the GBF, this research contributes to emerging scholarship and practice on pluralistic, equitable and ecocentric biodiversity governance.

How to cite: Smallwood, J., Gilbert, J., and Williams, N.: Integrating Rights of Nature into the Implementation of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-483, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-483, 2026.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in December 2022, outlines 23 action-oriented targets for 2030 and four overarching goals to achieve harmony with nature by 2050. As countries begin to implement these targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), significant challenges arise concerning how the benefits and burdens of biodiversity governance are distributed. Implementation measures such as the creation of new protected areas may limit local access to natural resources, or shifts in fishing policies could reallocate quotas, affecting livelihoods. These and other potential consequences of GBF implementation raise essential questions about justice.

While the GBF acknowledges the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, it offers little guidance on ensuring just implementation. Some targets explicitly call for equity, but overall, the framework lacks comprehensive mechanisms to address concerns of distributive justice. Furthermore, the GBF’s monitoring system predominantly focuses on ecological and technical indicators, with limited attention to how the costs and benefits of biodiversity governance are shared among countries, sectors, and communities.

This paper aims to address this gap by conducting an analysis of distributive justice in the implementation of the GBF. It will examine whether countries are committing to a just distribution of the costs and benefits of biodiversity governance, focusing on areas like the establishment of protected areas, resource management, and financial commitments. The project will apply a normative framework for distributive justice that incorporates principles such as contribution to biodiversity harm, benefit-sharing, and the ability to pay while respecting the right to development.

By combining a global overview across countries with an in-depth analysis of a select group of countries, we apply qualitative content analysis to the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and National Targets submitted since the adoption of the GBF. The findings provide critical insights into how countries’ biodiversity governance plans align with distributive justice principles, offering a timely contribution to the 2026 COP 17 stocktake and informing broader global discussions on just biodiversity governance.

How to cite: Koloffon Rosas, M., Lehmann, I., Immerzeel, R., and Kok, M.: Evaluating National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and National Targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in light of distributive justice  , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-555, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-555, 2026.

Attention to the everyday experiences of global environmental governance has steadily increased in recent years. At the Belém Climate Summit (COP30), for example, the Land Rights Now! movement echoed their calls to the international community to recognize the ways in which climate change treaties imprint on the daily lives of Indigenous Peoples. An allied protest of Indigenous leaders disrupted the summit and demanded land rights. Yet climate talks simply do not take on land rights as a potential climate solution. Instead, climate summits increasingly focus on finance as the core solution. By structuring international climate agreements almost solely around distributive justice norms, climate treaties further subjugate Indigenous Peoples to nation-state assertions of sovereignty, limiting Indigenous Peoples’ wellbeing pursuits and opportunities as well as their broader expressions of lifeways. As the global biodiversity regime seeks to measure progress and success through the Global Biodiversity Framework, policymakers and practitioners seem likely to reproduce similar injustices. By isolating ecological factors from social, political, and cultural factors in biodiversity governance—and neglecting the latter—the GBF threatens to reduce biodiversity conservation to a series of transactional, rather than transformational, relationships. In doing so, it rolls back decades of global efforts to redress injustices in conservation. This paper critically evaluates how the GBF constrains the landscape of justice possibilities in biodiversity conservation by leveraging a critical institutional theory of environmental justice to demonstrate how ‘good’ norms, such as those that underpin GBF indicators, do harm.  Through three case studies in Southeast Asia, we identify the risks and opportunities the GBF Framework introduces for Indigenous and local communities as they actively steward and conserve biodiversity in their lands. To address these constraints, we propose a novel set of relational environmental justice indicators that can strengthen monitoring and advance progress towards justice for those Indigenous and local communities stewarding global biodiversity.

How to cite: Marion Suiseeya, K.: Addressing the Justice Gap in Global Biodiversity Governance, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-258, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-258, 2026.

The Global Biodiversity Framework has led to optimism about the direction of biodiversity governance. On the other hand, recent years have also seen a green backlash against environmental policies among segments of society. Challenges for biodiversity governance include the mismatch between key stakeholder groups such as Indigenous, local, and practitioners’ knowledge and scientific knowledge; the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation; and the struggle over power in decision making. We illustrate those challenges with examples of coexistence between humans and wildlife, such as wolves in Europe and elephants in Africa; the conservation of living landscapes in the face of climate change; and the impact of the energy transition on biodiversity.

Social science on collective action of shared resources has demonstrated conditions for successful outcomes related to those challenges. Those resource governance challenges require that people manage complex systems. Learning from experience or from peers is an effective way to build relevant mental models. Fairness is a key component in decision-making in social dilemmas. If people perceive distributions of costs and benefits as unjust (distributional justice), they reduce their cooperation. In addition, research shows that not the regulations themselves, but the process to establish those regulations are key for the success of governance (procedural justice). Finally, who is included and excluded in the governance process could lead to issues of recognition justice. Justice issues are therefore key for successful outcomes in collective action situations.

Applying these insights to biodiversity governance reveals the importance of participatory and experiential activities, as well as the transparency of the trade-offs of the potential interventions for key stakeholders. The different types of justice issues fuel some of the green backlash currently observed.

Governance of biodiversity is governing people. Natural science is needed to understand the conditions for ecosystems to maintain and revive biodiversity, and social science is needed to understand how to incentivize people. Governance is a messy process, and instead of focusing on grand designs, there is a need for context specific implementation that is adaptive to dealing with new emerging challenges and opportunities.

How to cite: Kellner, E., Janssen, M., Biggs, D., and Perez Ibarra, I.: Global biodiversity governance amidst green backlash, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-870, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-870, 2026.

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) represents a significant advance in global biodiversity accountability. Yet, as the first collective stocktake approaches at CBD COP 17, critical structural weaknesses continue to threaten its capacity to deliver just and effective outcomes at national and sub-national levels. While the GBF substantially strengthens ecological targets and monitoring mechanisms, its accountability architecture remains disproportionately biophysical, systematically underrepresenting governance failures, social inequities, and political economy constraints that ultimately determine implementation success.

Drawing on applied policy experience in India across district-level SDG planning, climate governance, ESG regulation, industrial decarbonization, and life-cycle-based sustainability strategy, this contribution examines the growing disconnect between global GBF ambitions and national delivery realities in the Global South. It demonstrates how dominant ecological indicators frequently fail to capture distributive impacts on livelihoods, procedural exclusions in decision-making, and recognition injustices affecting Indigenous Peoples, informal workers, and marginalized rural communities. As a consequence, national implementation risks generating conservation outcomes that are environmentally measurable yet socially regressive.

The paper further exposes a systemic governance asymmetry between climate–carbon regulation and biodiversity protection. While national and corporate systems for GHG accounting, carbon disclosure, and life-cycle assessment are increasingly standardized and legally operationalized, biodiversity externalities remain weakly regulated, fragmented, or largely voluntary. This regulatory mismatch creates perverse incentives within energy-transition and decarbonization pathways, where carbon reductions are prioritized even as ecosystems are degraded and local communities bear unjust conservation and development costs. Without integrating biodiversity safeguards into carbon, energy, and ESG compliance regimes, the GBF risks being structurally subordinated to climate policy rather than reinforced by it.

The analysis identifies three core barriers to just GBF implementation: fragmented multi-level governance, limited legal enforceability of GBF targets within domestic regulatory systems, and weak alignment between public biodiversity obligations and private-sector accountability. It advances targeted recommendations for COP 17, including embedding justice-sensitive social and governance indicators within national GBF reporting, legally integrating biodiversity duties into land-use, environmental clearance, and corporate disclosure regimes, and strengthening participatory, consent-based local implementation. Without recentering justice within biodiversity governance, the GBF risks becoming technically robust yet politically hollow.

How to cite: An, A.:  Justice Beyond Indicators: Structural Gaps in the National Implementation of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-492, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-492, 2026.

Abstract
Ecological restoration in degraded ecosystems can require relocating people from environmentally sensitive areas, generating incompatibilities between environmental and social objectives central to the Global Biodiversity Framework. Despite increased attention to such dynamics, little is known about how such displacements aligns with or departs from principles of environmental justice, particularly where ecological outcomes are prioritized over social impacts, as is often the case in parts of Africa. To address this gap, we combined a desk review of policy documents and relevant literature on Rwanda with purposefully selected cases, to analyze national policies, assess justice dimensions, and identify gaps in the integration  of environmental justice into restoration practice. Our analysis shows that policy instruments guiding internal displacement in Rwanda fall into three main categories: spatial planning frameworks; land governance and expropriation regulations; and environmental and climate governance policies. Institutional involvement varies across cases but typically includes national ministries, district authorities, environmental agencies, and local administrative structures. In practice, displacement occurs through eviction from designated high-risk areas, strict enforcement of land-use master plans, and land clearance linked to ecological restoration projects. Although these policies formally commit to fair and participatory processes, communities are minimally consulted, and local authorities have limited influence over decisions. From an environmental justice perspective, procedural justice is constrained by centralized decision-making and superficial consultation, while recognition justice is weak, as local knowledge, identities, and land claims are largely overlooked in planning and implementation. Distributional outcomes are uneven, with vulnerable households bearing the greatest costs, while broader societal actors reap most of the benefits from restoration. Overall, these findings highlight persistent tension between ecological objectives and social outcomes and point to the need for governance reforms that embed more equitable approaches to restoration in Rwanda and across other regions pursuing large-scale restoration under the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Keywords: Restoration governance; Environmental justice; Power dynamics; Resettlement; Relocation 

How to cite: Sissi Mukanyiligira, D. and Loos, J.: Internal Displacement in Ecological Restoration: An Environmental Justice Perspective from Rwanda, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-679, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-679, 2026.