Responding to the triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution is an urgent imperative. To this end, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held from 7 to 19 December 2022 in Canada, adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) to protect nature and halt the loss of biodiversity worldwide.
To turn words into action, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are setting up an expert group on biodiversity financing, which will provide African countries with knowledge and technical assistance to mobilise more funding for biodiversity. It will also provide a platform for decision-makers and development partners in Africa to establish links, share knowledge, approaches, opportunities and solutions to mobilise biodiversity finance for nature-friendly development pathways in Africa.
Filling an annual gap of 700 billion dollars
The African Biodiversity Finance Expert Group was announced following the sub-regional workshop of Phase III of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Programme in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, from 25 to 28 July 2023.
“The AfDB recognises the importance of biodiversity financing to complement development aid and climate financing for African countries. The scale and scope of the impacts of biodiversity loss in Africa require innovative financing mechanisms and partnerships capable of rapidly mobilising resources from public, private and multilateral institutions on a large scale,” explains Vanessa Ushie, Acting Director of the AfDB’s African Natural Resource Management and Investment Centre.
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In its deployment, the expert group on financing African biodiversity will focus on achieving Goal D of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to ensure adequate financial resources, capacity building, technical and scientific cooperation, as well as access to and transfer of technologies, in order to fully implement the framework. Goal D also aims to close the $700 billion annual gap in biodiversity funding and to harmonise the financial flows of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2050 Biodiversity Vision.
Boris Ngounou