Experts agree that the world needs $700bn (£539bn) a year to restore nature, but no one knows where that money will come from and rich countries are Anger is growing over the fact that they are not paying their share.
As representatives from nearly 200 countries gather in Colombia for the United Nations Cop16 biodiversity summit, the question of who funds conservation and how that money is distributed becomes a key battleground. There is. And as negotiations enter their second week, frustration over a lack of funding is growing in the move.
The Africa Group, which represents African countries that have chosen to negotiate as a bloc, said in its first proposal to negotiations that it was “deeply concerned” about progress. The report said the idea that rich countries would meet their 2025 fiscal targets, which are due in three months, was “wishful thinking”.
The centerpiece figure agreed by countries at Cop 15 in 2022 was to generate $700 billion a year in funding for nature conservation, with a goal of $200 billion a year by 2030. Scientists estimate that $700 billion is the amount needed to sustainably manage biodiversity and halt the destruction of nature. Ecosystems and species. This figure includes all funding, including funding from the private sector, nonprofits, NGOs, and governments. In it, richer countries have pledged to provide $20 billion in public funds annually to poorer countries by 2025.
However, these funds have proven slow to materialize. At Monday’s talks, dubbed “Finance Day,” eight countries, including Britain, Germany, France and Norway, announced new commitments of $163 million.
Alice Jay, director of international relations at the Campaign for Nature, said that while both countries welcomed these new commitments, closing the fiscal gap would require “announcing $300 million a month from now until 2025, then in 2030. We need to maintain that every year.” ”
Oscar Soria, director of the Common Initiative think tank, described the amount as “minor.” He said negotiations stalled in the first week and “the most contentious issues revolved around biodiversity finance”.
“Countries in the Global South expect more from countries in the Global North,” said Dr. Isiak Kunle Salako, Nigeria’s Minister of Environment. “Finance is the key to achieving all goals.”
Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), agreed: “We cannot ignore the fact that one of the main obstacles to progress is lack of funding.” Resource mobilization is the key to enabling development. He explained that it is the center of discussion because it is the center of discussion. Countries with globally important ecosystems must implement action plans.
A Greenpeace activist holds a placard that reads, “Keep your promises: $20 billion by 2025.” Photo: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images
Rich countries are not contributing
So far, the majority of rich countries appear to be contributing less than half of their “fair share” of biodiversity funding, according to a report released ahead of the UN conference. According to a report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Campaign for Nature, as of 2022 (the latest year for which data is available and before the signing of the Cop15 agreement), 10.95 billion rich countries have signed the agreement. of biodiversity funding.
It is unclear how much donations were made in 2023 or 2024, but an ODI study found that there have been minimal new funding announcements since Cop15, and an analysis by research institute BloombergNEF suggests that in 2024 We found no evidence of significant new public funding for biodiversity.
“Fundraising is the currency of trust,” said Mark Opel, Campaign for Nature’s finance director. “It is the basis for building trust between the Global North and the Global South.”
It’s not just quantity, but quality is equally important. There is no globally agreed definition of biodiversity finance, and donor countries may fund projects that only partially benefit nature, such as food production, and call them ‘biodiversity-related’ finance. there is.
The bulk of the $700 billion was expected to come from rewiring $500 billion in environmentally damaging subsidies. According to the World Bank’s 2023 report, countries spend a total of $1.25 trillion on subsidies for agriculture, fossil fuel development, and other industries that destroy biodiversity. All countries had planned to identify harmful subsidies in public spending by 2025, but only 36 countries have made the information public so far. “There has been very little progress on this front,” Soria said.
Also on the agenda is whether increases in debt should be counted as fiscal matters. Broadly speaking, the countries with the least biodiversity are also the least developed and most indebted.
An independent expert group report released in October found that countries most exposed to climate change and nature loss are increasingly having to borrow to finance disaster response and adaptation. It shows. Debt is rising and becoming more expensive, meaning countries are unable to invest in conservation and climate resilience. “Many low- and middle-income countries are facing a ‘triple’ crisis that was not of their own making,” said Bela Songwe, former UN Under-Secretary-General and co-chair of the review. “Unless the international community comes together and takes steps to address this issue, countries will not have the climate resilience they need and will not be able to pursue low-carbon, nature-positive growth.”
However, natural financing in the form of loans to these countries is increasing. A typical model is to provide countries with loans at lower interest rates, conditional on achieving specific conservation goals. About 80% of the increased funding from 2021 to 2022 was in the form of loans rather than grants, according to unpublished estimates from the Campaign for Nature.
France, for example, provides 87% of its biodiversity contributions in the form of loans. Climate justice activists say the money should be given as a grant to help poor countries trapped in a cycle of debt.
People view exhibits of extinct species at the COP16 summit. Photo: Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP/Getty Images
African and Latin American groups have called for formal recognition of how the debt burden affects poor countries, but countries including France, Britain and China oppose this.
Who will distribute the money?
Countries are also embroiled in disputes over how the funds will be distributed. The current mechanism is the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which was established at Cop15 in Montreal as a means for countries to make financial contributions. It is currently located within the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
However, during negotiations, many developing countries (including Brazil and the African Group) argued that the fund should be kept in a separate fund, arguing that access and control by rich countries would be burdensome. Wealthy countries such as Europe, Canada, the UK and Japan say the status quo should remain the same. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) almost blocked the Nature Accord from being signed in 2022, out of anger that the GEF had all the cash.
Analysis by campaign group Survival International shows that of the 22 projects approved by GBFF to date, 30% of the funds have gone through WWF-US to work in developing countries, with fewer funds reaching indigenous peoples. There are growing concerns that there is a shortage. and local groups.
Meanwhile, as NGOs participating in the negotiations emphasized, time is ticking. Bernadette Fischler-Hooper, WWF’s Global Advocacy Leader, said progress on finance is critical to the remaining negotiations ahead.
“It’s the spiciest of all potatoes. It’s the nucleus of the atom, around which everything else revolves.”
