Cross-sectoral linkages

Select interventions that mutually reinforce climate, biodiversity, and broader sustainability objectives. Given the deep interconnections between climate and biodiversity, these interventions must be carefully selected and combined in a synergistic manner that also supports progress toward other sustainability objectives (Pörtner et al. 2021, 2023; IPBES 2024). Examples of such synergistic interventions may include (Neumann et al. 2025a, b, IPBES 2024, 2025):

- Sustainable land management (e.g.: sustainable intensification of agriculture, nature conservation and restoration) 

- Sustainable consumption and production (e.g. reducing waste and changing diets)

Effective pathways toward climate and biodiversity goals depend on targeting sectors where coordinated action can deliver the greatest synergies and reduce trade-offs. Climate-focused scenarios often rely on emissions markets, while biodiversity-focused scenarios emphasize nature protection. However, interventions in sectors that lie between these goals, for example in the agriculture, forestry, and other land use activities can offer strong potential for synergistic impacts on both climate and biodiversity (Neumann et al. 2025a; Soergel et al. 2021; IPBES 2024, 2025).

Move beyond stand-alone conservation and climate mitigation by aligning mutually reinforcing measures across the identified sectors. For instance, scenarios that achieve the 1.5°C Paris goal by the end of the century predominantly rely on emissions markets as price-based instruments to mitigate climate change. In contrast, scenarios capable of reversing declining biodiversity trends typically include nature protection interventions in their simulations (Neumann et al. 2025a, b). While biodiversity-focused interventions can also generate positive impacts in other sectors, integrated approaches that address multiple sustainability challenges simultaneously, rather than in siloes, hold the most significant potential for creating synergistic progress towards global targets (Soergel et al. 2021, IPBES 2024). This could, for example, entail additional changes in sectors that strongly drive global biodiversity loss, such as agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, mining and fisheries (IPBES 2024, 2025).

Scenarios that implement coordinated interventions across multiple sectors achieve the strongest combined benefits for climate and biodiversity (Neumann et al. 2025a). Increasing the number of jointly addressed sectors can lead to improved biodiversity and climate outcomes (Figure 2). The most promising pathways combine multiple interventions across sectors, surpassing current sustainability baselines to avoid trade-offs and unlock synergistic benefits (Neumann et al. 2025a). Coordinated action across priority sectors is therefore essential to unlock transformative change toward sustainability.

Figure 2: The boxplots illustrate the decadal percentage change in temperature since the pre-industrial age (1850–1900), as well as the percentage change per decade in total CO₂ emissions, the biodiversity intactness index (BII) and mean species abundance (MSA). These are categorized by the number of sectors with jointly implemented interventions. The boxplots show the distribution of each metric across sample sizes (i.e. scenarios). Temperature change and CO₂ emissions are expressed relative to the average global temperature and CO₂ emissions for the reference period of 1991–2020 (Figure adapted and modified from: Neumann et al. 2025a).