Breakthrough for nature recovery as billions of finance committed by donors
Donor Joint Statement announced at biodiversity summit sets out billions from international community to protect and restore nature
A herd of elephants (Loxodonta africana) with two baby elephants
At COP15 in Montreal today (15 December), the international donor community came together and committed billions of dollars to support the protection and restoration of the natural world.
The commitment, announced through the Donor Joint Statement, represents a major breakthrough in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and nature loss as the world sees mass species extinctions and habitat loss accelerate at an alarming rate.
Donors have committed to substantially increase their investment by 2025, which will be used to align financial flows from public and private sources to the restoration of nature.
Donor commitments include:
- In line with the 50% increase of its annual contribution to GEF-8, the Netherlands announced its commitment to increase its total biodiversity-related development finance by 50% in 2025, resulting in a target of $150 million for 2025.
- Spain intends to double its international funding for biodiversity, aiming to dedicate at least 550 million € of its Official Development Aid for biodiversity over the period 2021-2025.
- Canada will provide a new contribution of $350 million to support developing countries – home to the vast majority of the world’s biodiversity – to advance conservation efforts. This funding will support the implementation of the future Global Biodiversity Framework.
- Donors also reaffirm significant financial commitments made in the run up to Convention on Biological Diversity, COP15. The UK intends to meet its existing commitment of £3bn finance for climate change solutions that protect, restore, and sustainably manage nature as previously stated from 2021-2026.
- France has announced it would double its international finance for biodiversity to reach EUR 1 billion per year by 2025, Germany will increase its international biodiversity funding to EUR 1.5 billion by 2025, as part of the increase of its international climate budget to 6 billion euro annually by 2025 at the latest and the European Commission has pledged EUR 7 billion for biodiversity over 2021-27, in particular for the most vulnerable countries.
- Other donors Australia, Japan, the United States and Norway have also made significant commitments in the Donor Joint Statement.
These commitments will support developing countries who host much of the most important biodiversity worldwide, to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework once agreed, including protecting 30% of the world’s land and ocean.
In addition, 11 philanthropies have come together to form the Protecting Our Planet challenge and have doubled their support for nature conservation to $5 billion ahead of the COP15. With a strong COP15 outcome philanthropic leaders have indicated they will substantially increase their contributions further. Multilateral development banks are also stepping up and committing to increase their finance for biodiversity and support countries in delivering the new deal for nature being negotiated in Montreal.
These announcements respond to the 10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity, developed by the UK, Ecuador, Gabon and the Maldives to increase international development finance for nature as part of a comprehensive plan to finance nature recovery globally.
Forty countries have now announced their support for the plan, which sets out an ambitious and credible blueprint for closing the biodiversity finance gap. This agreement not only calls for greater mobilisation of domestic resources but for better alignment of financial flows with the Global Biodiversity framework to support nature recovery.
Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said:
A healthy and thriving natural environment underpins the social and economic prosperity of our livelihoods, which is why it is pivotal for the international community to put nature on the road to recovery.
The 10 Point Plan provides a clear vision for action, and I welcome the strong response to the plan from the international community with this significant increase in international public finance to protect our planet’s biodiversity hotspots”.
The announcement was made at an event held during the High-Level Segment, where Environment Ministers from around the world attend negotiations at COP15. Leaders from government, international financial institutions and civil society joined the event which outlined why ambitious, global action is needed to bridge the gap in financing biodiversity loss.
The UK hosted the event alongside Gabon, Ecuador and the Maldives, the key signatories of the 10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity. This landmark framework responds to calls from low and lower-middle income countries for additional international aid to enable them to better protect nature.
It commits the international community to create just transition in the economy to benefit the communities embedded in nature, the removal of subsidies which are harmful to biodiversity and the use of public and private investment to mobilise domestic resources, including green infrastructure and nature-based solutions.