A group of high-income countries, including the US, UK and Australia, have pledged to spend more than $10 billion a year for programmes to protect biodiversity, effectively doubling the amount of such funding over the next several years. These pledges are crucial to the agreements being hammered out at the COP15 biodiversity summit in Canada, but they only scratch the surface of what is needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
It is unclear how much of these , says at The Nature Conservancy, a US nonprofit. A report he co-authored needed to meet biodiversity targets set at COP15 is between $598 billion and $824 billion per year depending on the ambition of any agreement that is made at the summit.
鈥淲e know that we can鈥檛 get our goal without continuing to support countries who have the majority of the biodiversity, but not always the means to protect it,鈥� said , Canada鈥檚 environment minister, at a press event on 16 December. He also announced CAD$255 million in new funding for biodiversity initiatives such as a forestry program in Morocco.
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More money could be pledged in coming days, but 鈥渄onor countries don鈥檛 look to be ready to step up鈥�, said at WWF International, a conservation nonprofit.
Funding from high-income countries and the private sector for conservation projects in poorer countries is not the only way to close the gap, says Deutz. The other main approach countries are debating at COP15 is to eliminate or redirect subsidies for industries that drive biodiversity loss.
A report by Business for Nature, a group of businesses that advocate for environmental policy, estimated there are in 鈥渉armful subsidies鈥� for unsustainable agriculture, infrastructure development and fossil fuels, which mainly impact biodiversity indirectly through climate change.
One target under negotiation at COP15 would see countries eliminate or redirect $500 billion of those subsidies towards practices with a positive effect on biodiversity. For instance, the UK is considering a plan to shift subsidies for traditional farming to instead incentivise work that benefits biodiversity, such as soil restoration.
The Nature Conservancy report found that reforming agricultural subsidies would have the greatest effect for biodiversity. 鈥淭his is an agriculture story because that鈥檚 the biggest source of harm鈥� to biodiversity, says Deutz. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also the biggest need, and it鈥檚 also the biggest source of money.鈥�
Another financing rift between low-income and high-income countries has developed on whether to create a new fund to manage and distribute biodiversity finance, or to distribute money through an existing fund used for international environmental projects, which some say is inefficient and hard to access, especially for Indigenous communities. In the early hours of 14 December, low-income countries walked out of negotiations in protest on this point.
Talks have resumed, but ultimately 鈥渢he biggest problem to solve is how much funding is there, not which vehicles is it going through鈥�, says Deutz.
