Climate Policy Radar has launched the Nature Policy Library, an open, searchable collection of more than 3,000 national laws, policies, and UN submissions relevant to delivering the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
In 2022, 196 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. As they meet at COP17 to assess progress, the question is what countries have put into practice, and the answer lies in national laws, strategies, and sector policies.
Yet these documents are hard to bring together: national biodiversity strategies sit in UN databases, while the forestry, agriculture, and fisheries laws that shape what happens on the ground are published separately by different ministries, in different languages and formats. For negotiators, governments, and researchers, especially those with limited time and capacity, piecing together what countries have committed to, and how their laws deliver on it, is slow and often incomplete.
The Nature Policy Library brings the evidence into one place. It covers documents from every country in the world, including National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and laws and policies from key sectors, with a particular focus on nature-based solutions. It draws on data from Nature4Climate, NewClimate Institute’s Climate Policy Database, Gold Standard, the Grantham Research Institute, PreventionWeb, and the UN Conventions on biodiversity (CBD) and desertification (UNCCD).
Every document in the Library is fully searchable, automatically translated into English, and organised by concepts defined by policy experts, so users can find relevant passages even when documents use different terms for the same idea. It is built on the same infrastructure that underpins Climate Policy Radar’s database of more than 35,000 climate governance documents, and can be searched on its own or alongside it, making gaps and overlaps across a country’s commitments easier to see and learn from.
Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said: “Analyzing national policies and reports across different Conventions and multilateral environmental agreements has the potential to be a driver for synergistic implementation. The fact that these policy documents are stored in different locations and use different formats and terminology was a barrier for this type of analysis; however, the Nature Policy Library demonstrates that we can overcome that barrier. This puts us in a better position to better analyze national policies and reports and to make more informed decisions in the future.”
Dr Michal Nachmany, founder and CEO of Climate Policy Radar, said: “Much of this data was already public. It just wasn’t very usable: scattered across databases and languages, and hard to search. We often talk about climate and nature as separate areas, but in practice they sit on a continuum. The same forests, farms, and coastlines are shaped by both. The Nature Policy Library is a first step in reflecting that, bringing nature-related policy into view alongside climate so countries can see where their plans reinforce each other, and where they pull in different directions. We’re inviting governments and organisations to help us build what comes next.”
Lucy Almond, Chair of Nature4Climate, added: “For years, Nature4Climate has tracked the evolution of this landscape, monitoring more than 1,500 policies affecting nature-based solutions around the world. One lesson has become clear: when governments create coherent, long-term policy frameworks that align both climate and nature goals, private investment follows. The Nature Policy Library now builds on and amplifies that knowledge. By making policy developments easier to track, compare, and understand, it helps create the transparency and certainty that policymakers, investors, and businesses need to scale nature-based solutions as a core pillar of climate action.”
With just over four years left to meet the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 2030 targets, timely access to evidence is urgent. The Nature Policy Library is a foundation that Climate Policy Radar plans to expand and deepen. Governments, researchers, and institutions interested in collaborating, contributing data, or sharing feedback can contact info@climatepolicyradar.org.
