The implementation of global environmental frameworks and Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs) are crucial in addressing pressing and persistent challenges of biodiversity loss, climate change and land degradation. For Uganda, a country largely dependent on its nature resources and sharing critical ecosystems across the East Africa region, these frameworks are particularly critical.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was approved during the UN Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP15) in December 2022. It seeks to re-engineer the ambition to live in harmony with nature and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. It builds on the achievements and efforts of various initiatives at global, national, and sub-national levels in restoring, protecting, and conserving biodiversity.

The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) highlighted the need to shift focus from negotiations to action through implementing actions with specific attention to adaptation of communities, local economic and social systems to climate change consequences, while contributing to emissions reduction. The UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) and COP28 identified climate finance as a major factor in implementation of immediate climate action and mobilization of large-scale initiatives. 

At present, Uganda is implementing its second National Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan (NBSAP) and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), both principal instruments to domesticate the UNFCCC at national level. The interlinkage between biodiversity and climate change is relevant to ensure coherence and synergies between these strategic plans, hence providing multiple benefits including nature-based solutions, innovative financing mechanisms, climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development.

As a party to the UNFCCC, Uganda is required to participate in the UN Climate Change Conference and has been an active participant since its inception. The country has submitted its NDC for solutions that address challenges of climate change and reported on implementation of the convention objectives. However, many young negotiators in Uganda lack the necessary skills and knowledge to enhance their technical capacity to effectively participate in COP processes. Young people are disproportionately affected by loss of biodiversity, land degradation, pollution, and climate change, making their engagement critical to the success of global climate change mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity conservation efforts. 

In Uganda, UNDP's Nature Climate Energy and Resilience (NCER) unit undertook regional consultations working with the Youth Climate Working Group on Climate and Biodiversity, engaging communities to contribute to youth COP position papers and run conservation campaigns relating to tree growing. These processes have been pivotal in strengthening stakeholder engagement on environmental conservation and climate action.