Watch all sessions from the 7th GLF Investment Case Symposium on demand, and follow our live coverage from the Biodiversity COP16.
Right now, the world’s largest ever biodiversity event is taking place in Cali, Colombia: the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16).
As humanity sends nature to the brink of collapse, all eyes are on world leaders as they work out how to fund efforts to stem and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
It was alongside these talks that the GLF hosted its 7th Investment Case Symposium, bringing together 2,000 people in Cali and online from 108 countries to draw a roadmap to finance the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
Signed at the previous UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in 2022, the GBF set an ambitious target of raising USD 700 billion per year for biodiversity by 2030.
But where will those billions come from – and will we be able to find them before it’s too late?
Here are a few answers we gathered from the 7th Investment Case.
Much of the world’s biodiversity is found on the lands of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, which have sustainably managed their natural resources for millennia.
“It is no wonder that after centuries of genocide and expulsion attempts, the lowest rates of deforestation in Brazil are on Indigenous lands,” said Ceiça Pitaguary, secretary of Indigenous, environmental and territorial management at Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
“That’s why Indigenous Peoples and local communities need to be at the center of the COP process.”
And yet, only about 0.1 percent of global climate finance actually flows to Indigenous and local organizations.
The vast majority makes no mention of them at all, and even those that do are largely led by NGOs in the Global North.
Negotiators at COP16 have focused on Article 8(j) of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), which calls on countries to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities” pertaining to biodiversity.
But these talks have made limited progress so far, with some countries objecting to the inclusion of Afro-descendants in the article.
Speakers at the 7th Investment Case argued that far more money needs to be channeled directly into Indigenous and local organizations to support their conservation work.
“Direct financing should be the solution for supporting Indigenous Peoples,” said Kleber Karipuna, executive coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples Articulation of Brazil (APIB).
“But how can this be guaranteed in the long term? By protecting the biodiversity of Indigenous territories and recognizing Indigenous territories.”
By delegating the work and decision making to Indigenous and traditional communities, policymakers can also prevent what some critics have dubbed green colonialism.
“Whether it’s carbon credits or conservation projects, our lands are being dispossessed, or we lack full and effective participation in decision making,” said Emil Sirén Gualinga, a member of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku in Ecuador.
“All projects that happen on Indigenous territories should be based on co-creation. You should work as equals with Indigenous Peoples – not impose an agenda from the outside.”
One of the biggest threats to climate and biodiversity is that it doesn’t always pay to be green. In other words, environmental costs simply aren’t accounted for – giving companies an incentive to keep polluting and emitting.
“There are massive risks that are currently not priced into our economy, and there will be a moment of reckoning when that happens,” warned Martin Stuchtey, founder of the Landbanking Group.
“Why are institutional investors, corporations and banks not investing in helping to fill the finance gap? The reason is that they’re bound by market expectations and fiduciary obligations.”
At the same time, governments are spending at least USD 1.8 trillion a year – roughly 2 percent of global GDP – on subsidies that are driving the destruction of nature.
“What governments can do is to think about how to reform and redirect these subsidies and their spending towards something that’s more biodiversity-friendly,” said Kumi Kitamori, deputy director of the OECD Environment Directorate.
That means one of the biggest tasks in sustainable finance is to flip those incentives by properly valuing nature.
“How do we put a value on nature for the roadmap?” asked Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of FSC International.
“A key element would be what we call non-market valuation – putting a dollar value on those things for which there is no market.”
This was a contentious point for some speakers, who argued that the discourse on biodiversity finance has tended to commodify nature.
“When we talk about finance for nature, we are still only thinking about the economic and financial perspective,” said Heitor Dallasta, policy co-coordinator at the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN).
“We must recognize this diversity of values of nature. Nature is unique. Nature is not tradable.”
Regardless of whether we put a price tag on nature or not, one thing is for certain: we must develop new financial instruments to raise the billions we need.
One of the most promising solutions is blended finance, which combines different types of private and public funds to mitigate risk and make biodiversity projects more attractive to investors.
“We need to address the perception of biodiversity-related projects as high risk, and we also need to address uncertainty around financial returns,” said Camila Silva Arango, a technical assistance manager at Finance in Motion.
Silva gave three examples of how blended finance can de-risk investments: guarantees, insurance against specific risks, and so-called first-loss capital – an arrangement whereby public and impact investors provide a financial ‘cushion’ by absorbing any losses from a project.
Biodiversity bonds and habitat banks are other examples of up-and-coming financial innovations. Some speakers also proposed biodiversity credits, though this became the subject of much debate.
Meanwhile, Brazil launched a new public policy on restoration at COP16 today, with the aim of restoring 12 million hectares of forest by 2030.
The country, which will host next year’s climate COP30, will finance the policy through a combination of payments for ecosystem services, rural credits and the USD 250 billion ‘Tropical Forests Forever’ fund launched at COP28 last year.
“Restoration should not be perceived as a cost; it needs to be perceived as an investment because the cost of not doing it will be much higher,” said Fabiola Marono Zerbini, director of Brazil’s Forestry Department, at a 7th Investment Case session co-hosted by FOLUR and GEF.
Finance isn’t the only field promising shiny new innovations for the planet. So, too, is artificial intelligence – if used appropriately.
AI is already making inroads into conservation, from species monitoring to analyzing weather and climate data, though its huge carbon footprint has also raised red flags.
“AI has the capacity to link a lot of data and analyze it very well and at a very fast pace,” said Angela Viviana Bohórquez, co-founder of CarbonBox.
“In Colombia, we normally take one to two years to do an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine with AI, with the right model, we could do it in months.”
While many AI tools are still in their infancy, speakers saw a future where machine learning could help reduce barriers to knowledge.
“We can decrease the level of knowledge that a person needs to achieve many things with the help of AI when we have it on our smartphones or on our computers,” said Gabriela Gutierrez, founder and CEO of Tabs AI.
“But that’s in the future when we have AI agents that will take really complex tasks and be able to automatically do them,” she conceded.
That in turn requires cross-sector partnerships between developers, governments and financiers to ensure that AI tools are developed to solve the world’s problems – not create new ones.
“We need to connect the AI governance agenda more with agendas that are essential for a sustainable future, such as nature finance, so that new products and strategies can be developed,” said Armando Guio Español, executive director of the Global Network of Internet Centers.
This month’s Biodiversity COP16 is just the first of a trio of environmental ‘COPs’ that will wrap up the year.
Next month, the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, while December will see the UNCCD COP16 – focusing on desertification – take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
These three conferences revolve around the ‘Rio Conventions,’ which are three UN conventions agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
“It is no longer possible to think that biodiversity and climate change are not connected,” said Pitaguary of Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
“The impacts of climate change are more serious where biodiversity has been hit the hardest. They are also more severely affecting historically excluded populations, which is what we call environmental racism. That’s why it’s so important to talk about a just transition.”
As the climate, biodiversity and land crises mount, it’s clear that we must tackle them all together if we want to stand a chance of overcoming any of them.
“Why don’t we have more synergies between the different COPs?” questioned Serge Wilmes, minister of the environment, climate and biodiversity of Luxembourg.
“We need to find back the spirit of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. We have to work together on all levels.”
ThinkLandscape is currently reporting from the Biodiversity COP16. Stay tuned for our coverage of COP29 in November and the UNCCD COP16 in December.
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