The funds to meet a $20 billion finance target for biodiversity by 2025, a key component of last year’s landmark Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), should not come from biodiversity credits, according to the Samoan minister for environment speaking during an event on Wednesday, with other stakeholders also suggesting the nascent market is not likely to be ready to scale sufficient finance within less than three years.

As part of the GBF agreed in December in Montreal at COP15, developed nations committed to increasing their financial contributions to protect and restore nature to $20 bln per year by 2025 and $30 bln by 2030, though this was well below the $100 bln developing nations had asked for.

Speaking at a virtual event organised by green group the Campaign for Nature, Samoa’s environment minister, Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, asserted that biodiversity credits should not factor into meeting such targets.

“I don’t see any role that biodiversity credits should play in meeting the $20 bln target,” he said in response to a question posed by Carbon Pulse.

“Not at this stage, when it hasn’t been discussed or developments proposed,” he added.

“We need the target to be reached by the commitments of governments themselves, as well as identifying how much the country’s private sector is contributing.”

Others also cautioned that the biodiversity crediting market would not be mature enough by 2025 to drive sufficient finance to where it would be needed to meet the goal.

“Twenty billion dollars by 2025 – that’s coming up just around the corner,” said Brian O’Donnell, director at Campaign for Nature.

“I want to caution that we try to say that credits are the way to materialise this [target], because we will not be ready globally to have the safeguards or the assurances that the biodiversity credits will have a standard that is globally sufficient, or that is transparent.”

Biodiversity credits have gained a lot of traction since the GBF with established carbon market entities such as standard Verra exploring a methodological framework, and many seeing the agreement as a turning point for nature finance which, according to some, has remained in the shadow of climate over the past decades.

There may be an important time for crediting biodiversity, O’Donnell continued, but the 2025 goal would come too soon, agreeing with the Samoan minister that the cash would need to come mainly directly from the governments of developed countries.

SUBSIDY REFORM

An area of focus must be subsidy reform, the event heard, with an obligation within the GBF that countries identify harmful subsidies for nature also by 2025.

“Once we identify them, then they can be reformed. This is an essential component, but we know this won’t be easy,” said O’Donnell, referring to expected ongoing lobbying from certain sectors against subsidy reform.

A large proportion of the $20 bln could be redirected from subsidy reform, notably cutting support for oil and gas projects by developed economies to firms located in such countries.

“Reaching the $20 billion by 2025 is absolutely achievable with the right political will,” O’Donnell said, adding that this figure equated to only 1.1% of the $1.8 trillion the world is spending annually on subsidies that are driving the destruction of ecosystems and causing species extinctions.

“That’s about four days’ worth of those subsidies,” he said.

FINANCE TEST

Finance is critically missing for Samoa, the minister said, one of the most exposed countries to climate change and nature loss.

“The Global Biodiversity Framework was a critical component for us,” Schuster told the event, referring specifically to target 19 of the 23 overall targets, which stipulates that annual finance to implement national biodiversity action plans must reach at least $200 billion by 2030 – twice as much as the 2020 baseline – as well as the $20 bln committment by 2025.

The world needs to make sure these flows actually reach countries such as Samoa, he went on, which was “rarely” the case.

Only then could the nation afford to fully monitor its own biodiversity and effectively implement restoration and protection measures, he said.

An upcoming test of the actual influence of the GBF on rich nations will come at this week’s meeting of the G7 in Japan on May 19-21.

“That’ll be a test to see how serious these developed nations are in delivering [the GBF] and if they are really paying attention to the details,” said O’Donnell.

“It has now been five months since COP15 and we must all rapidly shift towards implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework.”

By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com

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