Fragmented environmental policies risk costly failures, world-leading experts warn

Posted on Wednesday 10 June 2026

The report, The Risks of Climate-Nature Silos, led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), and authored by leading scientists and policy experts from 13 countries across the globe, cautions that fragmented environmental policies are creating costly failures, missed opportunities and unintended damage. 

At a time when planetary boundaries are rapidly being crossed, the report argues that these policies must be managed as a single, interconnected "nature-climate system" to safeguard human health, livelihoods, and planetary stability.

When actions backfire

The report arrives at a critical time for international environmental diplomacy, with 2026 seeing all three UN Rio Conventions – on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (CBD), and desertification (UNCCD) – convening to outline future global action.

Supported by leading organizations including the National Trust, the Woodland Trust, the British Ecological Society, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the report highlights how well-intentioned environmental actions can backfire when developed within narrow policy silos. 

Key examples include: 

• monoculture tree plantations for carbon credits may replace species-rich grasslands
• taxpayer-subsidised biofuel mandates that drive habitat destruction
• concentrated solar power plants in desert regions that cause severe harm to local wildlife. 

Systems, not silos

Professor Lindsay Stringer MBE, Director of York Environmental Sustainability Institute at the University of York, played a key role in the report. It highlights the importance of land as a site for harnessing synergy across environmental targets, as well as the need to better recognise the potential role of marine and coastal systems in delivering "wins" for nature and climate. 

Professor Stringer said: “This report contributes to a growing body of evidence we are developing at the University of York and with our external partners that shows we need to rethink how we are governing some of the most urgent environmental issues of our time. Nature operates in systems, not silos. We need to learn from nature. 

“If we can shift towards more systems focused governance, it would not only be more financially efficient providing a direct benefit to taxpayers, but would allow us to make sure that what we do to tackle climate change doesn't have detrimental impacts on biodiversity loss or land quality. 

Unintended consequences

Professor Stringer added that proper assessment of trade-offs is vital to prevent unintended consequences across different scales: "Examples of this would be making sure that we don't put green energy infrastructure in areas that are important for biodiversity or in areas of high agricultural value.

"We already have three global environmental agreements in place to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, desertification, and drought. How we monitor, evaluate, and learn about our progress towards the goals of each agreement needs to be much more joined up to make sure the efforts under one agreement don't undermine those in another, or create new risks."

Making decisions

The roadmap laid out in the report calls for better coordination and alignment between the reporting systems and action plans of the Rio Conventions, stronger scientific evidence to tackle these crises jointly, and increased funding priority for projects that deliver simultaneous benefits for people, climate, and nature.

Professor Stringer said: "From a research perspective, a more joined-up approach to environmental governance requires us to take inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches that also include working with those communities that directly manage the environment.

"This isn't a problem that can be solved by ecologists or geographers alone. It's fundamentally a human and societal challenge relating to how we organise our institutions and economies and make decisions about how they are managed."