On 23 July 2024, UNU will host “Nature Crisis: What It Will Take to Achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework Commitments”, a BIG IDEAS Dialogue with Ms. Midori Paxton, Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Nature Hub. This hybrid event (online and in-person) will start at 18:00 on Zoom and in the 12F Conference Room at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.
The world is facing dual nature-climate crises – a planetary crisis. The World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2024 ranks extreme weather events, critical change to Earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and natural resource shortages as the gravest risks facing humanity over the next decade. To reverse this alarming trend, the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was agreed in 2022 to set a path towards reaching the global vision of a world living in harmony with nature by 2050. Among the Framework’s key elements are 23 targets for 2030.
If the world is serious about achieving these targets, which are a prerequisite for us to achieve the Climate Goals and many of the Sustainable Development Goals, it will require systemic shifts, given that drivers of biodiversity loss are embedded in intersectoral and global systems. These include unsustainable production and consumption systems and the invisibility of the value of nature in the economic and financial calculus.
Ms. Midori Paxton will join UNU Senior Vice-Rector Sawako Shirahase to elucidate how UNDP, as the development arm of the United Nations, is tackling these compound issues through its newly launched Nature Pledge for 2030.
Registration
To attend this event in person at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo, register here: https://go.unu.edu/u01OD
To attend this event online via Zoom webinar, register here: https://go.unu.edu/LzIPC
Online participants will receive an email on the day of the event with a link to join the Zoom webinar.
About the Speaker
Midori Paxton is the Director of the UNDP Nature Hub within the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support. Under the UNDP Nature Pledge for 2030, Midori leads UNDP’s work to support over 140 countries with a range of actions to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework, Land Degradation Neutrality, nature-based solutions for climate and the SDGs, and other multilateral agreements. The thematic areas range from ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation, ocean and water governance, environmental governance, food systems, biodiversity finance and work around value shift behavioural change for nature and people.
Midori brings 30 years of experience and expertise at the interface of nature conservation and sustainable development at country, regional and global levels. She was the UNDP Head of Ecosystem and Biodiversity between 2016 and 2023, and a regional technical advisor based in Bangkok from 2010 to 2016, supporting countries in Asia with identification and implementation of ecosystems and biodiversity projects.
Between 2000 and 2010, she worked in Namibia at the UNDP Country Office in Windhoek and also under the Directorate of Parks and Wildlife Management, Ministry of Environment and Tourism, coordinating a successful and innovative project to strengthen the national protected area system. She also took two UNV humanitarian assistance assignments as an information officer as part of the UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia in 2004 and a field officer administrating refugee camps with UNHCR in Tanzania in 2006.
Prior to that she worked as a journalist and staff writer for The Japan Times newspaper, covering environmental and human rights issues. Midori holds a master’s degree in Environment and Development from University of Cambridge. She is a prolific writer and is the author of six books and hundreds of published photos and articles.
