Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action

News in the Framework of the European Business & Biodiversity Campaign

 

Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action

OECD launches report that sets the economic and business case for urgent and ambitious action on biodiversity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s 15th Conference of the Parties (CBD COP15) in 2020 marks a critical juncture for one of the defining global challenges of our time: the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which underpin nearly all of the Sustainable Development Goals. Transformative changes are needed to ensure biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, and the delivery of the ecosystem services upon which all life depends.

This report sets the economic and business case for urgent and ambitious action on biodiversity. It presents a preliminary assessment of current biodiversity-related finance flows, and discusses the key data and indicator gaps that need to be addressed to underpin effective monitoring of both the pressures on biodiversity and the actions (i.e. responses) being implemented.

The report concludes with ten priority areas where G7 and other countries can prioritise their efforts:
  • Pursue and advocate for specific, measurable and ambitious targets in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to catalyse national and international action, including by using a focused set of headline indicators, across the state of biodiversity, the pressures on biodiversity and the actions needed to address these pressures and the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. A clear, effectively structured and operational post-2020 framework is critical.
  • Encourage business, financial organisations and other stakeholders to establish and share commitments and contributions to biodiversity through the Sharm El-Sheikh to Kunming Action Agenda for Nature and People, in order to mobilise action in advance of COP15.
  • Promote policy coherence across different sectors and areas to harness synergies and reduce trade-offs for biodiversity.
  • Scale up the suite of policy instruments for biodiversity and get the economic incentives right to ensure biodiversity is better reflected in producer and consumer decision-making.
  • Scale up and align finance for biodiversity from all sources, public and private.
  • Establish consistent and comparable finance tracking and reporting frameworks across countries and companies.
  • Identify, assess and reform subsidies harmful to biodiversity at the national level, and expand internationally comparable information on those subsidies, for example, through peer review.
  • Create a multi-stakeholder advisory group on biodiversity, business and finance, to advise on the adoption of a common approach for measuring and integrating biodiversity in business and investment decisions.
  • Assess and communicate socio-economic dependencies and impacts on biodiversity at relevant geographic scales.
  • Ensure inclusive and equitable transformative change, with special attention to public involvement, to lower-income households and most impacted people.
The report was prepared by the OECD for the French G7 Presidency and the G7 Environment Ministers’ Meeting, 5-6 May 2019.

Download: Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action

Source: OECD Publications, May 2019
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