The EU is the largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and a major player in international environmental and development agreements, with significant influence over global policies. In its proposal for the European Green Deal, the European Commission put a welcome new emphasis on the EU’s global leadership role by prioritising and integrating climate and environmental issues across EU external action.

The EU can and should play a leading role by boosting its ‘green diplomacy’ efforts, and working with partner countries to help them meet their climate and biodiversity objectives and deliver an inclusive and just transition of their economies and societies.

WWF has long called for ambitious spending targets for climate and environment under the EU Global Europe instrument (previously called “Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument” - NDICI) in the new 2021-2027 EU budget (MFF). This would contribute to much needed investments in the protection, restoration and sustainable management of natural resources, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

The Global Europe instrument has the potential to make the green transition a reality. Its spending target for climate action was increased to 30%, and its contribution to the overall annual MFF biodiversity target shall be 7.5 % from 2024 and 10% from 2026. For the next six years, the EU will also have an obligation to integrate climate and environment effectively across all its external interventions.

WWF advocates for the Green Deal’s principles and ambitions to guide the programming process and implementation of Global Europe projects, as well as the economic recovery from Covid-19. We support WWF offices across the world to engage with EU Delegations to ensure that environment, biodiversity and climate are prioritised in those instruments.

We advocate for an integrated and holistic approach to nature protection and climate action. Indeed, we believe that EU external action should incentivise investments that deliver benefits for climate mitigation, adaptation and nature protection, but also for health, socio-economic development and equality.

We pay particular attention to new EU conservation strategies, such as ‘Larger than Elephants’ for Africa, the EU Forest Partnerships and ‘NaturAfrica’. Those initiatives promote an inclusive landscape approach to integrate the needs of people and nature, and to support enabling conditions for long-term sustainable development.