The majority of developed countries are paying less than 50% of their “fair share” towards biodiversity finance, according to new analysis.
These nations contributed less than $11bn in total in 2022, the year that a landmark global nature deal, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), was agreed at COP15.
Taking into account the historical responsibility for biodiversity loss over the past 60 years, the London-based development thinktank ODI has calculated a “fair share” for each country towards a minimum collective target agreed in 2022 aimed at raising $20bn annually by 2025 for biodiversity conservation.
In 2022 – the most recent year for which data is available – only Norway, Sweden and Germany contributed their “fair share”, the analysis shows. The UK, Italy and Canada – host of the COP15 biodiversity summit, where the deal was struck – each contributed less than 40% of their share.
Japan was the “worst performer in absolute terms”, falling short of its fair share by $2.4bn in 2022 and “will need to at least triple its biodiversity finance” by 2025, ODI says.
“These big economies continue to drop the ball on biodiversity finance,” Sarah Colenbrander, co-author and ODI director of climate and sustainability, tells Carbon Brief.
Additionally, pledges to a separate “framework fund” established at COP15 have amounted to less than $250m, with Japan yet to pay a single yen of the ¥650m ($4.47m) it had pledged to the fund.
With COP16 set to start in Cali, Colombia, next week, Carbon Brief looks at the progress towards meeting the GBF’s finance targets, what constitutes a “fair share” and what needs to happen to fund nature conservation over the decade ahead.
What was agreed on finance at COP15?
At COP15 in 2022, 196 countries agreed to an ambitious global deal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, dubbed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
The “Paris Agreement for nature” was gavelled through despite objections from developing countries, with parties given little time to examine the fine print on how these targets would be financed.
The GBF has a target to mobilise “at least $200bn per year” for biodiversity conservation by 2030 from “all sources”– domestic, international, public and private.
Of this, developed countries – along with others that “voluntarily assume” their obligations – are expected to “substantially and progressively increase” their international finance flows for nature “to at least $20bn per year by 2025, and to at least $30bn per year by 2030”, the GBF text states.
The $20bn target has attracted criticism from developing countries.
One objection is the amount, given that the biodiversity “finance gap” – the shortfall between current funding for conservation globally and what is needed – is estimated at $700bn per year. The GBF states that countries must close this gap by 2030 through ending harmful subsidies ($500bn per year) and mobilising resources from the global north to south ($200bn per year).
According to Dr David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, insufficient finance was a “primary factor in the failure to achieve” any of the Aichi biodiversity targets, which were agreed by nations in 2010, with rich nations raising less than $4bn a year in funds on average between 2015 and 2020.
In the run-up to COP15, developing countries demanded that developed countries increase their financial contribution to $100bn per year, mirroring the floor of climate-finance commitments up to 2025.
Another criticism is the collective nature of the target, along with little clarity on how it will be met. According to ODI, this approach “often shields wealthy nations from individual responsibility”.
Instead, apportioning individual responsibility can mitigate that risk and increase accountability and transparency, the authors say.
Are developed countries on course to meet nature finance goals?
There is no internationally agreed-upon definition of biodiversity finance. This can lead to confusing – and sometimes inflated – estimates of just how much countries have contributed to protect nature.
There are two main channels of international public finance that developed countries can use to meet their biodiversity finance commitments under the GBF: official development finance (ODF); and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).
ODF combines bilateral “official development assistance” (ODA) and other official flows (OOF).
While these flows from developed to biodiversity-rich, developing nations are written into the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to acknowledge historical responsibility for species loss, it was only in 2022 that countries agreed on the specific “$20bn by 2025” and “$30bn by 2030” targets.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is one of the main sources of biodiversity finance data on whether countries are meeting their funding targets. (Although it also acknowledges its own limitations and assumptions around what it counts as biodiversity finance.)
There are large differences in how much public finance is intended strictly for biodiversity (“biodiversity-specific”) and how much is intended for other projects where conservation is either a significant goal or a marginal co-benefit (“biodiversity-related”).
According to the OECD, developed countries – including the US – contributed $12.1bn towards biodiversity finance in 2022, an increase of 3% from 2021. However, biodiversity-specific funding – with the principal objective of reducing biodiversity loss – declined from $4.6bn in 2015 to $3.8bn in 2022.
As seen with climate finance, the form that this finance takes matters just as much as the quantity.
For example, the OECD says that some of these large donors have mostly used loans for biodiversity-related development finance, including France (87% of their contributions), Poland (85%), Japan (81%) and Canada (51%). Loans are seen as problematic by developing countries because they add to the debt burden that they are already facing.
The OECD also notes that the largest spike in biodiversity finance over 2015-22 was from development banks, mostly in the form of loans to already debt-distressed, but nature-rich nations. (See: Carbon Brief’s Q&A on debt-for-nature swaps.)
The figure below shows how different donors have contributed to what the OECD describes as an “all-time high” in development finance for nature in 2022.
With contributions from multilateral institutions alongside the biodiversity-related finance from developed countries, including the US, the total funding for biodiversity crossed $20bn in the year 2022.
How do each country’s contributions compare to their ‘fair share’?
One limitation of biodiversity finance data tracked by the OECD is that developed countries are often represented as a single unit, obscuring progress – or lack thereof – on a national level.
This, according to ODI, fails to reflect each country’s individual responsibility for biodiversity depletion. In order to better reflect countries’ roles, ODI has assessed each country’s “fair share” of the target of $20bn per year by 2025.
This calculation is based on each developed country’s specific ecological footprint between 1960 and 2021. (This “trade-adjusted footprint” accounts for a country’s consumption, including imports and exports, to give a more accurate picture of how consumption at home impacts biodiversity globally.) It also incorporates each country’s capacity to pay, measured by gross national income, and its population in 2022.
The chart below shows the biodiversity finance contributions of developed countries in 2022 against their “fair share” and the shortfall in meeting the GBF’s targets.
While ODI acknowledges that the $20bn is a fraction of the $700bn a year that biodiversity actually needs between now and 2030, it stresses that “this new data should spur a conversation around a delivery plan” for this sum.
Lead author and climate economist Dr Laetitia Pettinotti, who developed ODI’s “fair share” methodology, adds:
“There is an equivalent in climate finance, designed ahead of COP26 [in 2021] to catalyse further contributions, and there’s no reason why the same can’t be applied to this goal. Every year beyond the deadline is another year of deteriorating ecosystem services and declining biodiversity. These aren’t just numbers; this target matters to us all.”
The authors also acknowledge that their “fair-share” calculations do not take into account the “substantial biodiversity loss before 1961”, which “continues to contribute to less resilient ecosystems today”.
According to thinktank Third World Network (TWN), which was not involved in the report, using a 60-year cumulative ecological footprint “as a proxy for historical responsibility” does not fully reflect the “vast ecological debt” rich countries owe to poorer nations, “beginning since the colonial era”.
In a statement shared with Carbon Brief, TWN said:
“Calculating rich countries’ fair share of financing cannot be solely benchmarked against $20bn. $20bn per year was committed in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The target is on a cumulative sliding scale – by 2025, the total provision should amount to at least $60bn, and increase thereafter to at least $30bn annually by 2030. This amounts to at least $210bn by 2030.”
The chart below shows how the target would accumulate per year, if “at least $20bn a year” was raised and then increased to $30bn per year until 2030.
How much is being contributed to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund?
The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was established at COP15 in 2022 as another channel for countries and companies to contribute to the biodiversity finance target.
It is currently housed under the World Bank’s “green” lending arm – the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – although developing countries continue to call for an entirely new fund governed by the COP.
Despite an initial flurry of pledges, rich nations have contributed less than $250m to the fund, as of 31 August this year, according to data the GEF has shared with Carbon Brief.
Additionally, according to the GEF data, Japan has yet to pay any of the￥650m ($4.4m) it has pledged to the fund, while Luxembourg has so far paid only $1.1m of the $7.7m it has pledged.
In August, COP16 president Susanna Muhamad urged global-north governments to “make a gesture to increase trust in the conference and actually put their money” into the GBFF to demonstrate their commitment.
Unlike development finance flows, which can be hard to track and isolate, the GBFF publicly reports all of its financing to the COP and can clearly identify how countries are contributing to target 19.
Dr Chizuru Aoki, manager of the division of conventions and funds at the GEF, tells Carbon Brief:
“We welcome the commitment of the COP president to a successful outcome, including on resource mobilisation…Biodiversity needs much more funding [and t]he GEF is the heart of global finance for biodiversity and provides parties with an efficient and transparent vehicle to achieve target 19(a).”
While the fund has received no new pledges in recent months, according to Aoki, additional financial pledges are expected to be made during COP16.
Of the $244m received so far, the GBFF has already allocated more than half ($110m), with almost $40m going to four projects in Brazil, Gabon and Mexico. These include creating protected areas and sampling environmental DNA in Brazil’s Caatinga – the world’s largest semi-arid region, once home to the endangered Spix’s macaw.
The fund has to allocate at least 36% of its resources to least-developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS).
It also has set an “aspirational target” of 20% of all its resources to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities.
However, new analysis by Indigenous rights campaign group Survival International points out that the fund is falling “far short” of this “aspiration” and “more than 50%” of all the money allocated so far will go through global-north environmental charities, such as WWF and Conservation International, to execute and implement projects in developing countries.
How has private finance contributed to meeting the nature finance target?
Target 19 also refers to “leveraging private finance” and “innovative schemes”, such as biodiversity offsets and credits, that will see an increased push and pushback at COP16. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A on biodiversity offsets).
According to the OECD, private philanthropic flows for biodiversity grew from $501m in 2017 to $932m in 2021 and then decreased to $700m in 2022.
At the same time, private finance flows that have a direct negative impact on nature amount to $5tn a year, according to the State of Finance for Nature report.
Maelle Pelisson, the advocacy director for Business for Nature, tells Carbon Brief:
“Whilst it’s positive to see a growth in private philanthropies contributing to biodiversity finance, private philanthropy alone is not going to be sufficient to address nature loss…Governments should adopt and implement measures to ensure businesses include the value of nature in short- and long-term decisions, including requirements on disclosure and transition plans.”
The GBFF can receive contributions from private companies, with an expert group set up in June to advise the fund on issues that might arise, such as potential conflicts of interest. However, to date, no private companies have pledged contributions to the fund.
What are developing countries expecting to see at COP16?
Discussions on biodiversity finance in the run up to COP16 have been “difficult” and “polarised”, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin has reported.
In meetings on resource mobilisation earlier this year, developing countries “urged” rich countries to fulfil their commitments to close the biodiversity finance gap.
Many country groups continue to demand a separate global fund for biodiversity finance under the COP, distinct from the GBFF. (See: Carbon Brief’s interactive feature on who wants what at COP16.)
Developing countries have also called for a panel of experts to analyse “all financial flows” and “determine the extent to which parties have met their obligations under target 19”.
Both these suggestions remain heavily bracketed ahead of COP16 in Cali.
Nicky Kingunia Ineet, the DRC negotiator who had raised an objection before the gavel went down in Montreal, tells Carbon Brief:
“The creation of a special fund dedicated to biodiversity remains a sine qua non in the search for solutions linked to the mobilisation of resources in favour of biodiversity. This specific fund should be new, predictable and adequate, under the control and guidance of the COP, and accountable to it. The existing mechanism is provisional [and unfortunately] has not mobilised [the] resources as hoped.”
“Developed country parties should provide the necessary financial resources to developing countries to enable them to meet the additional costs of implementing the [CBD] and the GBF. This is wholly insufficient.”
Sarah Colenbrander, co-author of the report and ODI’s director of climate and sustainability, tells Carbon Brief:
“The US, Japan, Spain and Canada pride themselves on their countries’ natural beauty and their fantastic national parks, but these big economies continue to drop the ball on international biodiversity finance.”
The post Developed countries failing to pay ‘fair share’ of nature finance ahead of COP16 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Developed countries failing to pay ‘fair share’ of nature finance ahead of COP16
As a treaty to protect the High Seas entered into force this month with backing from more than 80 countries, major fishing nations China, Japan and Brazil secured a last-minute seat at the table to negotiate the procedural rules, funding and other key issues ahead of the treaty’s first COP.
The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) pact – known as the High Seas Treaty – was agreed in 2023. It is seen as key to achieving a global goal to protect at least 30% of the planet’s ecosystems by 2030, as it lays the legal foundation for creating international marine protected areas (MPAs) in the deep ocean. The high seas encompass two-thirds of the world’s ocean.
Last September, the treaty reached the key threshold of 60 national ratifications needed for it to enter into force – a number that has kept growing and currently stands at 83. In total, 145 countries have signed the pact, which indicates their intention to ratify it. The treaty formally took effect on January 17.
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“In a world of accelerating crises – climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution – the agreement fills a critical governance gap to secure a resilient and productive ocean for all,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
Julio Cordano, Chile’s director of environment, climate change and oceans, said the treaty is “one of the most important victories of our time”. He added that the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridge – off the coast of South America in the Pacific – could be one of the first intact biodiversity hotspots to gain protection.
Scientists have warned the ocean is losing its capacity to act as a carbon sink, as emissions and global temperatures rise. Currently, the ocean traps around 90% of the excess planetary heat building up from global warming. Marine protected areas could become a tool to restore “blue carbon sinks”, by boosting carbon absorption in the seafloor and protecting carbon-trapping organisms such as microalgae.
Last-minute ratifications
Countries that have ratified the BBNJ will now be bound by some of its rules, including a key provision requiring countries to carry out environmental impact assessments (EIA) for activities that could have an impact on the deep ocean’s biodiversity, such as fisheries.
Activities that affect the ocean floor, such as deep-sea mining, will still fall under the jurisdiction of the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
Nations are still negotiating the rules of the BBNJ’s other provisions, including creating new MPAs and sharing genetic resources from biodiversity in the deep ocean. They will meet in one last negotiating session in late March, ahead of the treaty’s first COP (conference of the parties) set to take place in late 2026 or early 2027.
China and Japan – which are major fishing nations that operate in deep waters – ratified the BBNJ in December 2025, just as the treaty was about to enter into force. Other top fishing nations on the high seas like South Korea and Spain had already ratified the BBNJ last year.
Power play: Can a defensive Europe stick with decarbonisation in Davos?
Tom Pickerell, ocean programme director at the World Resources Institute (WRI), said that while the last-minute ratifications from China, Japan and Brazil were not required for the treaty’s entry into force, they were about high-seas players ensuring they have a “seat at the table”.
“As major fishing nations and geopolitical powers, these countries recognise that upcoming BBNJ COP negotiations will shape rules affecting critical commercial sectors – from shipping and fisheries to biotechnology – and influence how governments engage with the treaty going forward,” Pickerell told Climate Home News.
Some major Western countries – including the US, Canada, Germany and the UK – have yet to ratify the treaty and unless they do, they will be left out of drafting its procedural rules. A group of 18 environmental groups urged the UK government to ratify it quickly, saying it would be a “failure of leadership” to miss the BBNJ’s first COP.
Finalising the rules
Countries will meet from March 23 to April 2 for the treaty’s last “preparatory commission” (PrepCom) session in New York, which is set to draft a proposal for the treaty’s procedural rules, among them on funding processes and where the secretariat will be hosted – with current offers coming from China in the city of Xiamen, Chile’s Valparaiso and Brussels in Belgium.
Janine Felson, a diplomat from Belize and co-chair of the “PrepCom”, told journalists in an online briefing “we’re now at a critical stage” because, with the treaty having entered into force, the preparatory commission is “pretty much a definitive moment for the agreement”.
Felson said countries will meet to “tidy up those rules that are necessary for the conference of the parties to convene” and for states to begin implementation. The first COP will adopt the rules of engagement.
She noted there are “some contentious issues” on whether the BBNJ should follow the structure of other international treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as well as differing opinions on how prescriptive its procedures should be.
“While there is this tension on how far can we be held to precedent, there is also recognition that this BBNJ agreement has quite a bit to contribute in enhancing global ocean governance,” she added.
The post Big fishing nations secure last-minute seat to write rules on deep sea conservation appeared first on Climate Home News.
Big fishing nations secure last-minute seat to write rules on deep sea conservation
The annual World Economic Forum got underway on Tuesday in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, providing a snowy stage for government and business leaders to opine on international affairs. With attention focused on the latest crisis – a potential US-European trade war over Greenland – climate change has slid down the agenda.
Despite this, a number of panels are addressing issues like electric vehicles, energy security and climate science. Keep up with top takeaways from those discussions and other climate news from Davos in our bulletin, which we’ll update throughout the day.
From oil to electrons – energy security enters a new era
Energy crises spurred by geopolitical tensions are nothing new – remember the 1970s oil shock spurred by the embargo Arab producers slapped on countries that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, leading to rocketing inflation and huge economic pain.
But, a Davos panel on energy security heard, the situation has since changed. Oil now accounts for less than 30% of the world’s energy supply, down from more than 50% in 1973. This shift, combined with a supply glut, means oil is taking more of a back seat, according to International Energy Agency boss Fatih Birol.
Instead, in an “age of electricity” driven by transport and technology, energy diplomacy is more focused on key elements of that supply chain, in the form of critical minerals, natural gas and the security buffer renewables can provide. That requires new thinking, Birol added.
“Energy and geopolitics were always interwoven but I have never ever seen that the energy security risks are so multiplied,” he said. “Energy security, in my view, should be elevated to the level of national security today.”
In this context, he noted how many countries are now seeking to generate their own energy as far as possible, including from nuclear and renewables, and when doing energy deals, they are considering not only costs but also whether they can rely on partners in the long-term.
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In the case of Europe – which saw energy prices jump after sanctions on Russian gas imports in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine – energy security rooted in homegrown supply is a top priority, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Davos on Tuesday.
Outlining the bloc’s “affordable energy action plan” in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum, she emphasised that Europe is “massively investing in our energy security and independence” with interconnectors and grids based on domestically produced sources of power.
The EU, she said, is trying to promote nuclear and renewables as much as possible “to bring down prices and cut dependencies; to put an end to price volatility, manipulation and supply shocks,” calling for a faster transition to clean energy.
“Because homegrown, reliable, resilient and cheaper energy will drive our economic growth and deliver for Europeans and secure our independence,” she added.
Comment – Power play: Can a defensive Europe stick with decarbonisation in Davos?
AES boss calls for “more technical talk” on supply chains
Earlier, the energy security panel tackled the risks related to supply chains for clean energy and electrification, which are being partly fuelled by rising demand from data centres and electric vehicles.
The minerals and metals that are required for batteries, cables and other components are largely under the control of China, which has invested massively in extracting and processing those materials both at home and overseas. Efforts to boost energy security by breaking dependence on China will continue shaping diplomacy now and in the future, the experts noted.
Copper – a key raw material for the energy transition – is set for a 70% increase in demand over the next 25 years, said Mike Henry, CEO of mining giant BHP, with remaining deposits now harder to exploit. Prices are on an upward trend, and this offers opportunities for Latin America, a region rich in the metal, he added.
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Andrés Gluski, CEO of AES – which describes itself as “the largest US-based global power company”, generating and selling all kinds of energy to companies – said there is a lack of discussion about supply chains compared with ideological positioning on energy sources.
Instead he called for “more technical talk” about boosting battery storage to smooth out electricity supply and using existing infrastructure “smarter”. While new nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors are promising, it will be at least a decade before they can be deployed effectively, he noted.
In the meantime, with electricity demand rising rapidly, the politicisation of the debate around renewables as an energy source “makes no sense whatsoever”, he added.
The post Climate at Davos: Energy security in the geopolitical driving seat appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate at Davos: Energy security in the geopolitical driving seat
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