GPO 2025

Nature Needs a Seat at the Table in the New Multilateralism

Hugo Slim argues for an innovative approach to the climate crisis, calling for nature to transition from being a permanent observer of Geneva’s policymaking to being present at the table in decision-making processes.

Geneva Policy Outlook
Jan 20, 2025
5 min read
Photo by ‪Salah Darwish / Unsplash

By Hugo Slim 

The great city of Geneva is a curious contradiction. Nestled among the most beautiful manifestations of nature, it talks only of humans. Turning their backs on nature, Geneva’s diplomats and international civil servants ignore the glorious landscape to focus mainly on one species. 

This indifference to nature changes at weekends when many of International Geneva’s residents eagerly head to mountains, lakes, and forests. But instead of being only a focus of their leisure, nature should be a significant part of their weekday multilateralism, too. Geneva is well-placed to shape a new nature-positive approach to global policy and should do so fast.

Centring the Earth in International Policy

Geneva’s diplomatic blind spot for nature needs to change. The climate emergency demands it, and there are positive signs that change is underway.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is now a significant player in the Earth’s turn in global policy, making a steep change in its ability to communicate Earth’s weather-related hazards and trends. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) teamed up to call for global action to protect nature in the face of the climate crisis. The Sphere Project, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) jointly produced new guidelines on nature-based solutions (NbS) in humanitarian action. The ICRC increasingly emphasises the protection of the environment under International Humanitarian Law (IHL).

Much of Geneva’s work is framed around climate. Still, it is better conceptualised as an agenda to protect the Earth and for humanity and nature to adapt together in the years ahead. Although climate change is the cause of our century’s predicament, its effect is best seen as a whole Earth emergency. Humanity is better understood as a unique member of a wider Earth community, not a stand-alone species.

Policy discourse framed as climate change alone keeps our heads in the clouds. An Earth policy keeps institutions grounded in strategies to support humanity amidst all life and prevent Earth system tipping points that would make the world unliveable for humans and much of the biodiversity we love and need. These tipping points include changes in the cryosphere and hydrosphere, like the melting of glaciers and the warming of the Lac Leman.

Recognising that humanity is nature-based

Geneva did much to champion humanity in the last two hundred years through its many norms, treaties, and institutions, recognising our species as a single moral community that must care for one another. Now, International Geneva must go further.

In the 2020s and 2030s, International Geneva must deepen the doctrine of humanity, recognising our shared identity and mutual interests with the wider Earth community of plants and animals and its ecosystems.

In the 2020s and 2030s, International Geneva must deepen the doctrine of humanity, recognising our shared identity and mutual interests with the wider Earth community of plants and animals and its ecosystems. Recognising humanity as part of an Earth community will lead to policymaking that values and protects the mutual interests of humans and nature on which our lives and livelihoods depend.

Human life is nothing without other life. The needs of nature and the needs of humans often overlap. International policymakers must prioritise mutual aid strategies in which humanity helps nature, and nature helps humanity. Development and humanitarian action that explicitly sees humans as nature-based should be actively championed in new policies and practices in every Genevan institution and beyond. 

Representing nature in Geneva and beyond 

Nature must receive a seat at Geneva’s many meetings and negotiations, as it has a clear stake in policymaking.

An essential step in achieving this harmony with nature is to recognise nature as a political subject in its own right and represent it accordingly in Genevan diplomacy. Nature must receive a seat at Geneva’s many meetings and negotiations, as it has a clear stake in policymaking.

Bringing nature’s needs and agency to the table is an urgent task in multilateralism. Delegating representatives for forests, rivers, animals, and ecosystems in policymaking would grant nature personhood. Alternatively, it can be done by actively developing the Rights of Nature and the Rights of Mother Earth or the new human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment in the Human Rights Council. IHL already recognises the civilian status of the natural environment.

The UN’s new Pact for the Future is disappointing in all this. It offers no new vision of nature in global politics and fails to centre the Earth and its protection as the sine qua non of humanity’s success. This rudimentary omission from New York allows Geneva to work incrementally to put it right by urgently including nature at the table. 

The WHO and Geneva’s health community are already moving fast by prioritising One Health or ‘Planetary Health’ policies that recognise our relationship with nature as a critical determinant of human health and reduce health risks exacerbated by climate change. 

Similarly, the WTO and ILO have a role to play. Trade and labour policy must explicitly recognise nature’s needs and agency in building a new green economy. Nature-positive trade is vital as businesses find new synergy with nature in creating renewable energy, a materials revolution, adapted infrastructure, and resilient agriculture. 

UNHCR and IOM must partner with WWF, IUCN, and WHO to address the movement and immobility of animals, plants, insects, and microbes as climate change disrupts habitats and forces them to migrate alongside humans.

Geneva’s peacemaking community, like the HD Centre and Interpeace, must recognise nature as a party to negotiations as they enable humans to make peace with nature. Such peacemaking involves reducing violence against nature and between people by uniting them around shared interests in water, soil, ecosystems, livestock, cooling, and biodiversity. Much of this can be done as confidential “Earth Diplomacy”, which avoids some political entanglements.

Finally, human and nature organisations need to merge much more. The two great nature organisations, IUCN and WWF, should be embraced for their knowledge, network, and expertise. They should be frequently invited to Geneva to correct the tunnel vision of its institutions’ only-human mandates. 

In today’s multilateralism, nature must transition from being a permanent observer of Geneva’s policymaking, from its mountaintops and forests, to taking its rightful place as a permanent member of International Geneva with its mission and representatives.


About the Author

Hugo Slim is a Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford and a Visiting Professor at the International Academy of Red Cross Red Crescent at Suzhou University. His new book is Humanitarianism 2.0 – New Ethics for the Climate Emergency.

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Geneva Policy Outlook or its partner organisations.