Caribbean Regional Consultation Meeting on Integrated Financing … – UNEP

Addressing the triple planetary crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution is an urgent imperative. To that end, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Post-2020 GBF) for protecting nature and halting biodiversity loss across the globe. The GBF will be an important tool to complement the other international agreements. Significant resource mobilization across the climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development agenda, in terms of financing green (increasing nature-positive flows), financing transitions that are aligned with pathways to maintaining global warming to below 1.5C, and greening finance (reducing nature-negative flows and phasing out harmful subsidies as fossil fuel subsidies), will be central to the global response to the poly crises.

Catalyzing additional finance for biodiversity

The small island and low-lying coastal states significantly rely on international public sector financing, however, the potential for private sector financing should also be explored, taking into account the nature of the private sector in SIDS and their debt dynamics.

Domestic public finance - which has historically had an outsized role in financing biodiversity - cannot fill this gap alone. An exponential increase in Official Development Assistance (ODA) alone would also be insufficient. Given this context, UNEP published an analysis in support of CBD COP 15 negotiations, of existing financing mechanisms and instruments in support of biodiversity conservation that includes a review of a select few financial instruments and structures involving public-private partnerships or blended finance structures such as pooled investment vehicles, bonds, risk mitigation instruments (guarantees & insurance), high-quality carbon credits, and biodiversity offsets & credits. These have the potential to scale and catalyze additional financing for biodiversity.

Enhancing access to biodiversity finance

Drawing from lessons learned with accessing finance from multilateral funds, key features for improving and enhancing access to finance for small island developing states include less burdensome application procedures, simplified approval procedures, direct access modalities for national and regional entities as well as for sub-national and local organizations or entities, faster deployment of funding, efficient governance and reduced transaction costs and information asymmetries. Moreover, given the interconnected nature of challenges, finance solutions that enable co-benefits across climate, biodiversity and development agendas, that align with national priorities, and promote debt sustainability are critical.

Strengthening UNEPs mandate to support ocean governance issues by exploring biodiversity financing at the country level is pivotal. Biodiversity finance, when effectively implemented, plays a pivotal role in achieving global environmental goals, including the Paris Agreement on limiting climate change to below 1.5OC through the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and achieving Land Degradation Neutrality Targets, and halting biodiversity loss and reverse the three planetary crises. Importantly, successful implementation of financing biodiversity necessitates the whole of government and whole of society approach.

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Caribbean Regional Consultation Meeting on Integrated Financing ... - UNEP