Earlier this week Defra’s Minister for Nature, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, announced £28 million of funding to help support countries in the global south to develop their economies without harming biodiversity, and to invest in their own natural capital.
And today at COP17, Minister Riddell-Carpenter hosted an event discussing how to move beyond the conceptual case for nature security, to showcase implementation in practice.
Biodiversity is worth protecting in and of itself. For the countless plant and animal species we share our planet with, and the intrinsic wonder and beauty they give us. That value is incalculable.
But biodiversity and key ecosystems around the world also underpin our economies, our food and water security, supply chains and, we now know, our national security.
In January we published our national security assessment on global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. Its message was clear: ecosystem degradation is not only an environmental challenge, but a strategic risk to UK security and prosperity. As natural systems degrade, risks can cascade across food and water security, economic resilience, supply chains and geopolitical stability.
Therefore, biodiversity does have a value. And that value is felt all around us: in the water we drink, the food we eat, the resilience of our communities, and through our economic resilience and national security.
Yet it rarely appears on balance sheets, or in investment decisions. We need to make the invisible, visible; bringing nature's value into the evidence and policies that shape finance, investment and growth. Doing that demands action.
And so, part of the funding announced this week will go to support the work of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Biodiversity Finance Initiative (Biofin) and to Financial Sector Deepening Africa’s (FSD Africa) Nature Programme.
These initiatives help countries put biodiversity at the heart of economic and financial decision-making, through identifying and reforming environmentally harmful subsidies, making public spending more effective, mobilising private finance for biodiversity and putting it at the heart of board room’s decision-making.
Much of this work will take place in countries hosting these critical ecosystems, while supporting our commitments on delivery of the Global Biodiversity Framework Targets 14, 15, 18 and 19.
Protecting biodiversity is not simply an environmental objective. It is an investment in our economic resilience and our national security.
Aligning public budgets and private capital with nature
Below Onno from Biofin and Dorothy from FSD Africa talk about how their work develops resilient economies by including nature in economic decisions and attracting public and private investment.
Onno van den Heuvel, Global Lead for Nature Finance at UNDP, said:
"Redesigning subsidies that harm nature presents an immense opportunity to close the finance gap, especially in an era of strained public budgets and declining Official Development Assistance.
"According to an estimate by the Paulson Institute, globally “governments spend more subsidising nature’s destruction in one month than they do on biodiversity protection in an entire year.” The UK’s support to Biofin will enable governments in 138 countries to screen and redesign subsidies that contribute to nature loss.
"In Thailand, Ecuador and Colombia, this work has already demonstrated impact at scale, with millions of dollars in savings to public budgets and a greening of agricultural credit that delivers co-benefits for the climate, livelihoods and gender equality.
"The idea that countries must choose between economic growth and protecting nature is fundamentally flawed.
"A transition to a nature-positive economy could unlock US$10.1 trillion in annual business value and create 395 million jobs by 2030, through changes in how we produce food, build infrastructure and meet our energy needs. The support to Biofin will drive that systemic transformation by de-risking and incentivising investments that can deliver nature-positive economic growth."
Dororthy Maseke, Nature Finance Lead at FSD Africa, said:
"Crucial to this transformation is changing how the financial sector builds nature into policy and investment decisions. Institutions that understand their dependence on nature can better value, invest in, and protect it.
"Nowhere is this more important than Africa, where up to 62% of GDP is highly or moderately dependent on nature. Investing in nature is not only about protecting habitats such as the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest and a critical carbon sink. It is about livelihoods and economic stability.
"The World Bank estimates the Congo Basin’s forests provided ecosystem services worth US$1.15 trillion in 2020, over 90% of it from global climate regulation. Yet shifting agriculture, urban expansion and land pressures saw the forest cover reduced by 8.6 million hectares (equivalent to over a third of the total size of the United Kingdom) between 2000 and 2020.
"Today’s support for FSD Africa and the African Natural Capital Alliance will help influence investment decisions and mobilise private finance to protect and restore this landscape.
"FSD Africa will work with Central African regulators, banks and insurers to apply the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures for identifying, assessing and disclosing nature-related risks and opportunities and develop a regional roadmap for adopting it.
"Through ANCA, the continent’s leading platform for nature-positive finance, we will connect institutions to share learning and help build a pipeline of high-integrity investments that draws private capital into the region’s natural assets."
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