The IUCN World Conservation Congress, held in October 2025, made incredible progress made in agreements for human rights and the future of life on our planet in areas like subnational and municipal government leadership and strategy, gender equality, human rights-based approaches, agreeing to acknowledge and act on the negative impacts of AI development on the natural world and directly addressing the impacts of fossil fuel development on biodiversity.
Rosalind Helfand attended with the California Global Biodiversity Alliance (CalGBA) delegation to engage on the subnational and municipal leadership agenda and strategy development — this agenda is being championed globally with the leadership of IUCN North America.
California participants from NGOs and government, as well as our partners nationally and globally came together to make subnational leadership a bright light amidst all of the challenges we face.
The State of California also announced that it is joining the IUCN as a subnational government member, and the state’s Marine Protected Areas network has been newly added to the IUCN Green List.
