IUCN Congress Adopts Nine NRDC‑Led Resolutions; Members Reaffirm Multilateralism as Essential to Protect Nature and People

ABU DHABI — At a moment when the climate and biodiversity crises demand coordinated action, IUCN World Conservation Congress Members adopted nine NRDC‑led policy and governance resolutions. The package reflects NRDC’s leadership across oceans, forests, and wildlife, and sets clear expectations for how governments, industry, and institutions turn science into action. It includes a new and urgent resolution that recommits IUCN to multilateralism and directs analysis and engagement to keep international cooperation on track as environmental impacts accelerate.

Following is a statement from Yamide Dagnet, senior vice president, international, at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):

“Multilateralism and global cooperation are not optional. They are how the world protects what no nation can protect alone, and the only way to confront global threats we all face. When leadership wanes in some powerful countries, other nations and their partners must help keep cooperation on track. All countries should uphold their treaty commitments and invest in solutions that deliver real results for nature and communities. The law is also catching up with the science: The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion confirms that states must act to prevent foreseeable climate harm—or face responsibility—making cooperation and accountability nonnegotiable.”

The conservation agenda passed at the 2025 IUCN Congress sets an ambitious four‑year path, with concrete expectations for governments, industry, and institutions, and a practical blueprint for deeper cooperation. The multilateralism resolution anchors a broader slate of NRDC‑driven measures to protect forests, oceans, and wildlife and to improve governance so commitments turn into results. They also build momentum for near‑term milestones, including implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework and the UNFCCC COP30 climate negotiations.

With a million species threatened with extinction, many within decades, NRDC put forward a suite of motions focused on protecting species. One motion outlines urgent actions the United States should take to protect the fewer than 50 mature Rice’s whales that make the Gulf of Mexico home and are threatened by the reckless, greedy, and morally bankrupt oil and gas industry. Two other motions focus on systemic solutions to ecologically unsustainable, profit-driven exploitation of species by prioritizing the highest level of protection for threatened species via domestic and international law and directing the IUCN to review and, if necessary, revise its 25-year-old approach to sustainable use of wild animals and plants to ensure it is meeting conservation needs in the context of the biodiversity crisis.

The forest measures in this package are central to global momentum heading into upcoming climate and biodiversity meetings. They include a motion advancing harmonized accountability for ending deforestation and forest degradation so that climate and nature policies apply the same standards across the globe, and one calling for an expert assessment of industrial forest biomass. These complementary measures support partners on the frontlines while ensuring temperate and boreal forests are counted and protected alongside tropical forests.

Five measures were approved by electronic vote before the Congress and were affirmed onsite. Four additional measures were adopted in the Members’ Assembly during the Congress. Below is a summary of what they do and why they matter.

Approved via electronic vote (affirmed at Congress)

• Motion 31: Protecting the Gulf of California World Heritage Sites from LNG industrialization. Highlights the need to shield the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California—often called the “Aquarium of the World”—from the Saguaro Mexico Pacific LNG project (or other LNG projects) and related shipping, which would raise risks from noise, ship strikes, spills, and industrialization in critical habitat for whales and other wildlife.
• Motion 45: Reducing the impacts of forest biomass energy on climate and biodiversity. Tasks IUCN experts to assess the full impacts of industrial‑scale forest bioenergy, including logging for wood pellets and transoceanic transport and combustion, which worsen climate change and harm wildlife and ecosystems.
• Motion 66: Updating the IUCN policy on the sustainable use of wild living resources. Directs a robust, transparent, and participatory process to consider revising the 25‑year‑old policy and to assess IUCN programs for alignment, so advice on exploitation, use and trade in wild species reflects current science and equity.
• Motion 115: Actions to avert the extinction of Rice’s whale. Urges the United States to take urgent steps to protect the critically endangered Gulf of Mexico population and calls on other countries, IUCN, and international bodies to coordinate recovery across the species’ range.

Adopted by the Members’ Assembly

• Motion 11: Delivering harmonized accountability and means of implementation for international forest protection goals. Calls for analysis of inconsistent country reporting on halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation, and for State Members to support common standards, transparency, and tools that turn pledges into measurable progress.
• Motion 136: Addressing the direct exploitation of wild species. Affirms the highest needed protections for species facing decline, asks the IUCN to review its advisory role and criteria, and creates a process to identify species threatened by exploitation and act quickly when extinction risks escalate.

Governance reforms adopted

• Motion A: Improvements to the motions process at Congress. Strengthens participation, clarity, and timely consideration of motions and appeals so members can advance solutions efficiently.
• Motion B: Criteria for accepting motions (IUCN rules of procedure, rule 54). Clarifies acceptance standards to keep the motions process fair, credible, and focused on outcomes.

New and urgent motion adopted

• Motion 145: Reaffirming the IUCN’s commitment to multilateralism and global cooperation. Directs an urgent analysis of how declining cooperation undermines climate, biodiversity, and health goals, and urges all countries to engage or reengage in multilateral processes needed to deliver conservation results, supported by IUCN members.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).