Climate and nature policies are working against each other because governments are still treating the planet’s biggest environmental crises as separate problems, a major new report has warned.
The report, The Risks of Climate-Nature Silos, led by conservation charity ZSL, says fragmented policy on climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation is creating costly failures, missed opportunities and unintended damage.
The warning comes after a record-breaking heatwave across Europe, accelerating biodiversity decline and growing concern over land degradation.
ZSL said 2026 will be a crucial year for environmental diplomacy as the three Rio Conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification meet to shape future global action.
The report, written by scientists and policy experts from 13 countries, argues that governments, funders and institutions must stop treating climate, nature and land as separate policy boxes.
Instead, they should be managed as one connected nature-climate system that supports human health, livelihoods, economic security and the stability of the planet.
Professor Nathalie Pettorelli of ZSL’s Institute of Zoology and Lead Author of the report said: “Climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation are not separate emergencies; they are deeply entangled crises that feed off each other.”
She warned that continuing to tackle them in isolation “isn’t just financially inefficient; it is increasingly hazardous, locking in policies that solve one problem while worsening another.”
The report says the danger is already visible in real-world policy choices.
Monoculture tree plantations created to generate carbon credits can end up replacing species-rich grasslands, meaning a climate measure damages biodiversity.
Conservation schemes that fail to account for future climate conditions can also fail over time, because the habitat or species being protected may no longer survive in the same way as temperatures and rainfall patterns shift.
The report also points to taxpayer-backed biofuel mandates that can drive habitat destruction and concentrated solar power plants in desert regions that can harm wildlife through direct burns and extreme water stress.
These examples, ZSL argues, show that good intentions are not enough when policies are designed in silos.
Nathalie added: “These unintended consequences are not isolated cases. They reflect a systemic problem in how environmental governance is structured. Despite the evidence in front of us, we are still operating with institutions and incentives built for separate crises.”
The report says marine and coastal systems are one of the clearest examples of the problem.
The ocean absorbs more than 90% of the excess heat created by greenhouse gas emissions and supports billions of livelihoods, yet marine governance remains split across climate, biodiversity, fisheries and conservation systems.
That fragmented approach risks weakening protection for the very systems that help regulate the climate, support food security and protect coastal communities.
The authors are calling for better alignment between the reporting systems and action plans of the Rio Conventions, stronger scientific consensus on how to tackle the crises together and more funding for projects that deliver benefits for people, climate and nature at the same time.
The report also warns that environmental degradation is already threatening national prosperity and says finance ministers must start treating climate and nature risk as central economic risks.
Nathalie said: “The science is clear, the solutions are increasingly available, and there is growing agreement across sectors that integrated action is essential. All we need now is the political will to move from agreement to implementation.”
ZSL said nature can recover but only if policy is guided by science and built around the reality that climate, biodiversity and land are part of the same system.
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