068 - Biodiversity financing
068 - Biodiversity financing
RECOGNISING that biodiversity and associated ecosystem services provide a range of invaluable services for society that underpin human health, well-being and economic development;
RECALLING that more than 30% of the mitigation necessary to deliver the 2-degree Celsius target under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change can be cost-effectively achieved through investment in nature, specifically by stopping deforestation and restoring coastal ecosystems;
RECALLING that a joint increase in finance is necessary to safeguard life under water (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14) and on land (SDG 15) and to allow humanity to achieve the other SDGs;
RECALLING that annual global funding needed to safeguard nature is estimated at US$ 300–400 billion while the current finance flows are around US$ 50–80 billion per year, based on the latest available data, and current biodiversity-related bilateral official development assistance is less than US$ 10 billion per year;
RECALLING that the cost of inaction in the face of biodiversity loss is estimated to be at least 7% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2050;
ALSO RECALLING the difficulties in estimating risks associated with nature degradation and the need to develop better methodologies to assess those risks and establish efficient finance tracking and reporting frameworks; and
ACKNOWLEDGING the 2019 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report ‘Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action’ that sets out the economic and business case for the G7 and other countries to take urgent and ambitious action to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss;
1. CALLS ON Members to:
a. assess and communicate socio-economic dependencies and impacts on biodiversity at geographic scales relevant to decision makers; and
b. assess and showcase the co-benefits of investments in nature conservation and its sustainable use and the costs of inaction;
2. CALLS ON states:
a. to integrate biodiversity goals and considerations into the national development plans and policies of key economic sectors;
b. follow the recommendations set out in the 2019 OECD report, in particular to:
i. scale up the suite of policy instruments for biodiversity and get the economic incentives right to ensure biodiversity is better reflected in producer and consumer decision-making;
ii. scale up and align finance for biodiversity from all sources – public and private – to meet the CBD post-2020 biodiversity objectives;
iii. establish consistent and comparable finance tracking and reporting frameworks across countries and companies; and
iv. identify, assess and reform subsidies harmful to biodiversity at the national level, and expand internationally comparable information on those subsidies, for example, through peer review; and
c. to link international trade deals and development funding to biodiversity protection and restoration;
3. CALLS ON the financial sector to work on assessing risks associated with nature degradation within its portfolios, as well as the impact that its investments have on biodiversity; and
4. CALLS ON the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and donors to continue financing biodiversity conservation in future replenishments.
