Key Messages

The United Nations’ efforts to address critical environmental challenges hit multiple roadblocks this year, with four key summits — in Colombia on biodiversity, Azerbaijan on climate, Saudi Arabia on land degradation, and South Korea on plastics — failing to deliver meaningful outcomes.

These meetings brought together governments, researchers, policymakers, industries, and civil society organisations to ensure their goals were aligned, build equitable accountability, and mobilise adequate finance for action. But all four summits achieved no or partial success on issues they had set to address. In fact, this is the fourth time UN discussions designed to push countries toward significant progress in addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, and plastic pollution have either ended without consensus or yielded unsatisfactory outcomes.

This is a significant setback in global efforts to address biodiversity loss and climate change, potentially leading to delayed action on critical issues such as climate finance, drought mitigation, and plastic pollution, with the most vulnerable countries potentially suffering the greatest impact.

The partial or full failures of these talks raise pressing concerns about the global community’s ability to combat biodiversity loss, climate change, and other urgent environmental crises. Understanding the reasons behind these setbacks and their implications for global cooperation is essential to charting a more effective path forward.


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Cover image by freepik

Four UN environmental summits fell short in 2024. What happened?