Latest content: Environment and climate change

The main aim of this guiding manual is to improve climate finance flows to Nauru. It can be used as a reference document by the government of Nauru and all the other relevant stakeholders to access international climate funds and different types of funding options available for climate adaptation and mitigation projects globally.

This report highlights the impact of the Commonwealth Blue Charter, the landmark agreement by Commonwealth countries to actively co-operate to address the their many ocean-related issues and commitments, between 2022 and 2024. It focusses in particular on how the Charter's 10 Action Groups have tackled ocean-related challenges and advanced sustainable ocean development. 

The importance of the world’s ocean for human societies and environmental health can hardly be overstated. Approximately 3 billion people across the world rely on a healthy ocean for their food security and livelihoods. The goods and services coastal and oceanic environments provide are conservatively worth US$3 trillion to the global economy per year, equivalent to the fifth-largest economy by gross domestic product in 2015. However, the health of the ocean is under significant threat, facing simultaneous, serious and growing threats from climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Yet funding thus far has been insufficient. Despite the critical need to protect the ocean and the many mutually beneficial reasons for greater action on ocean issues, Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life under water, is the least funded of all the SDGs by a significant margin. The magnitude of blue finance flows (i.e., finance directed towards sustainable ocean-related activities) is currently too small to meet the scale of the problem.

Terrestrial ecosystems and the services they provide are fundamental to human well-being. However, they face an increasing triple threat from climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss.

On current trends, 95 per cent of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050. Similarly, despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating at a global scale, and this decline is projected to continue or worsen. Further, climate change puts the well-being of billions of Commonwealth citizens at risk, especially those residing in small island developing states (SIDS) and other vulnerable states. Collectively, these challenges will impede the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) throughout the Commonwealth.