Abstract
While CBD COP15 keeps being postponed, negotiations on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework continue. In parallel, while the window of opportunity for meeting the goals of the Paris agreement is rapidly closing, the Glasgow Climate Pact has substantively maintained the global governance of climate change unaltered. The tasks of stopping biodiversity loss and keeping global temperature well below 2°C are fraught with multiple difficulties, given the alarming rate of biodiversity loss, which is intertwined with the climate, economic and sanitary crises of the last 15 years or more. Political will on the part of States seems not up to the challenge of ensuring the resilience of ecosystems and preserving all forms of life on Earth.
In this context, we wish to explore the role of non-state actors, including indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as subnational governments, in both improving the international response to the global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change and ensuring a more effective implementation of the international framework currently in force. Indigenous peoples and local communities are increasingly involved in the global governance of biodiversity and climate change, both as agenda settlers and when it comes to the concrete realization of international goals and standards. The same is true for subnational governments, which act as agenda settlers with alternate success, but are key actors when it comes to the implementation of international and EU environmental obligations.
Against this framework, we argue that this increasingly established role of non-state actors can alter the governance rules of the game and contribute to overcome implementation, compliance and enforcement challenges deriving from State inaction. Furthermore, there is room for mutual learning among different regimes, since developments in the involvement of these actors in one area may influence other areas of environmental law and therefore contribute to systemic change.