During COP-15, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity created Place Québec, a unique facility encouraging whole-of-society participation to implement the Convention and its Protocols. The space enabled civil society, indigenous peoples, local communities, and all other stakeholders, to showcase action and commitments across society in support of the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework and its successful implementation. Through encouraging multistakeholder gathering and dialogue, within and across constituencies, Place Québec fostered the sharing of views and experiences and the planning of effective collaborative action for the benefit of biodiversity.

Situated in a large hall at the Palais de Congrès in Montréal, Place Québec included:

• A conference room that hosted multistakeholder events and dialogues, including high-level sessions during the High-level Segment of COP-15.
• Hubs for the use of different stakeholder groups: indigenous people and local communities; women’s organizations; youth organizations; academic and research organizations; faith-based organizations; business, industry and finance organizations; and non-governmental organizations.
• A similar hub for the use of agencies of the United Nations.
• A larger pavilion for subnational and local authorities.
• A lounge area; and
• A stand dedicated to the Sharm El-Sheikh to Kunming to Montreal Action Agenda for Nature and people.

Place Quebec and Business Biodiversity

Between the 9th and 11th of December, Place Québec held several events organized around the theme of Business and Finance. Stakeholders in both the private and public sector, including but not limited to the World Economic Forum, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, UNEP, UNDP, Global Canopy, Deloitte, and EY hosted sessions exploring diverse themes surrounding business and biodiversity. A summary of these sessions is provided below.

Place Quebec 9th of December Events (full agenda and session summaries)

This session, organized by the World Economic Forum, had the main objectives of:

• Raising the ambition level of both businesses and governments in setting biodiversity goals.
• Discussing what next-step action businesses can take based on the biodiversity framework and collective efforts.
• Mainstreaming the global biodiversity targets and interpreting the targets to business actions and opportunities.

This session, organized by the Capitals Coalition and Business for Nature, aimed to stage a discussion between government and business on how to rethink and reform subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity, and, where possible, to redirect them towards nature positive outcomes. The session explored how Target 18 can reflect the ambition, scale, and urgency needed to reform environmentally harmful subsidies by discussing the importance of subsidy reform of business and governments.

This session, organized by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, aimed to highlight progress made on two critical areas:

• Making disclosure of ESG-related risks and impacts mandatory and standardised.
• Building capability in the directors about what a “future proof business” is and having the right processes in place to make informed decisions.

More broadly, the session intended to discuss the way WBCSD members and partners create tools, pilots, and programs to embed climate and nature into corporate decision making to create scaled impacts. It also had the objective of calling companies to support the WBCSD and its partners in the TCFD and TNFD, while also calling governments to continue to drive the transparency agenda.

This UNEP-organized session had the objective of showcasing how businesses can take responsibility for a healthy planet and benefit from including aspects of biodiversity in their marketing campaigns. The session sought to expose how businesses can develop relevant measures that support the implementation of the consumption and production related targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Organized by the Cross Sector Biodiversity Initiative, this event encouraged banks, mining, and energy companies to share their insights on Net Zero and Nature Positive ambitions from a private sector perspective, through the discussion of challenges and opportunities across the value chain of these three industries. Specifically, this session sought to bring insights on:

• The pressures/requirements of investors/banks to finance extractive projects in support of the energy transition.
• The impacts and trade-offs of achieving nature positive including avoidance and using nature based solutions and offsets.
• Balancing synergies and trade-offs between Net Zero and Nature Positive.

This session, organized by UEBT, Textile Exchange, and OP2B, saw the lead organizations share common lessons learned form industry coalition work in facilitating business action on biodiversity. Following that, representatives from companies shared their experiences in building a foundation towards achieving biodiversity targets across their supply chains. The session concluded with suggestions for what the valuable work of businesses is already doing for biodiversity on the ground – and how that can be replicated throughout global industry.

Place Quebec 10th of December Events (full agenda and session summaries)

The session led by Global Canopy, Deloitte and EY, showcased participants the current opportunities and roadblocks around appropriately valuing, regulating, and monetizing biodiversity, creating and leveraging market incentives to promote biodiversity conservation and restoration. It aimed to provide the appropriate context setting, SME expertise, and cross-sector pollination to create a collaborative environment around solutioning for the financialization of biodiversity to incentivize conservation and restoration efforts.

In this session the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, together with PRI and UNEP-WCMC, invited leading insurers and investors to reflect on how approaches to measure, act and report impact and dependency on nature, such as via the development of a standardized framework by the Taskforce on Nature-related Disclosures, and the International Sustainability Standards Board, or the update of the Global Reporting Indicator on Biodiversity as guiding their actions on nature. The main objectives of this session was to discuss to what extent the TNFD LEAP FI approach is applicable for insurers and investors and what recommendations could be made to the TNFD and other standard setters based on the UNEP FI-led pilots in support of the TNFD with nearly 40 financial institutions including 12 investment manager and insurers.

Organized by the World Economic Forum, this session sought to empower businesses to take immediate first steps in developing robust measurement and strengthening accountability of nature-positive actions to contribute to a successful CoP15 and the implementation of the Target 15.

The organizer of this session, NatureFinance, developed a Alignment Toolkit to allow national, international and corporate financial actors to assess their degree of alignment and support the changes needed to put them on the path to a nature positive, net zero future. At this event NatureFinance showcased its Alignment Toolkit and heard from partners about its development, future users, and applications.

Aimed at business practitioners, policy makers and organizations and networks that work with business, this event hosted by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development shared stories from around the world of how business, government and other stakeholders have come together to transform key sectors including agriculture, built environment and energy systems, highlighting the enabling corporate and government policies and strategies required. Participants then had the chance to interact directly with the presenters through small group discussions.

This session organized by the Capitals Coalition brought together experts from finance, business, NGOs and government to explore the role of valuations in effectively implementing Target 15 of the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework. Participants had the opportunity to provide input to the Value Commission as they develop the global criteria for transparent value factors and discuss the path to mainstreaming the inclusion of nature’s value in decision making.

Place Quebec 11th of December Events (full agenda and session summaries)

In this event organized by the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, a group of investors announced the formation of an investor-led global initiative – Nature Action 100 – focused on driving greater corporate ambition and action to tackle nature and biodiversity loss. The initiative aimed to engage companies in key sectors with the largest impacts and dependencies on nature to ensure they take timely and necessary actions to protect and restore nature and ecosystems.

This session, organized by the United Nations Development Programme, had the objectives of: (i) raising awareness around potential instruments to deal with the double challenge of increasing debt and limited fiscal capacity compounded by increasing financing gaps to conserve nature; (ii) to engage with key stakeholders for evidence-based policy-making; and (iii) to increase visibility and transparency of debt for nature swap discussions through the COP15 platform.

Organized by the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials, this side event brought together a selection of the initiatives such as (but not limited to) TNFD, SBTN, PBAF, FfB Foundation and UNEPFI, and showed how they strengthen and complement each other while exploring opportunities for further synergies in their support of impact and dependency assessment and disclosure in the financial sector. The session aimed to build confidence in financial institutions and their regulators that assessments can already be done, and the results can be used to steer investments from negative to positive impacts.

This session hosted by the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, had the objective of raising the attention of CBD delegates, finance sector, and stakeholders on the absolute necessity to align public and private financial flows to achieve the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature and to have this language in Goal D, target 14 and 15 in the Global Biodiversity Framework.

This session, organized by the World’s Resources Institute focused on two topics. First, mobilising more finance resources to invest in nature, and second, enhancing incentives policies and technical tools to invest in nature.

Being organized by LSE INSPIRE and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, this event brought together a high-profile panel of international central banks and supervisors and representatives from the financial sector to discuss the implications of biodiversity loss for the financial system and the role that the financial sector can play to support the transition towards a nature-positive future. This session aimed to bridge the gap between central banks and supervisors’ expectations on reporting and disclosure of risks and constraints financial institutions may have in meeting these expectations and discuss avenues of moving forward despite these challenges.