10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity announced by Ecuador, Gabon, the Maldives and the United Kingdom
The UK is one of four countries calling for governments around the world to follow a plan for bridging the global biodiversity finance gap ahead of COP15, which is currently estimated to be $700 billion annually.
Unveiled by the governments of Ecuador, Gabon, the Maldives and the United Kingdom, the Political Vision: The 10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity aims to provide a comprehensive way forward for governments and the finance sector to ensure we invest in protecting nature, rather than destroy it. It includes commitments to increase international and domestic funding for biodiversity from all sources, reduce harmful expenditures, and align public and private flows to be nature-positive.
The policy paper states a commitment to strengthen all financial and non-financial means of implementation, to transform economic and financial sectors, mainstream biodiversity across all sectoral and cross-sectoral policies, programs and plans, and to safeguard the wellbeing of people and the planet. The plan sets out the financial commitments and policy reforms needed to finance biodiversity on the required scale, including encouraging wealthy and lower-income nations to allocate new funds for biodiversity and deliver on their existing financial pledges. It calls on countries to ensure that funds for overseas development do no harm to biodiversity, and for countries to dedicate a portion of their national funding for climate change to activities that protect and conserve nature. It also commits countries to ensure that public finance is invested in ways that benefit biodiversity, including reviewing national subsidies and redirecting those that are harmful to nature.
The plan asks businesses to assess and disclose commercial risks associated with biodiversity decline, and to set quantitative targets to reduce their impacts, and encourages multilateral development banks and international financial institutions to ensure that their investments benefit biodiversity, and asks that they report on their biodiversity funding in time for COP15.
The EU, as well as 15 further countries have endorsed the plan. The paper was launched at a joint high level side event at the UN General Assembly, where Germany also announced that it was upping its funding for international biodiversity conservation to €1.5 billion (US$1.49 billion) a year — an increase of €0.87 billion — making it the largest national financial pledge yet to save nature.
Read more on the The 10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity on the GOV.UK website.
