The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the Swedish government have launched a platform designed to mobilise finance for biodiversity protection across the Arab region.
The multi-stakeholder platform was launched after a meeting in Beirut earlier this week, ESCWA announced on Friday.
“This platform responds to the call to mobilise biodiversity finance under a changing climate in view of accelerating the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” said Mounir Tabet, deputy executive secretary at ESCWA.
“The importance of the platform lies in its capacity to mobilise biodiversity finance in the context of limited climate finance in the region.”
According to ESCWA, the platform will provide capacity-building, technical expertise, and financial assistance to three new working groups focused on a set of specific issues across the region:
• Nature-based solutions for climate resilience
• Land degradation in arid agricultural zones
• Renewable energy and biodiversity
The working groups will bring together stakeholders from different sectors who will identify priority interventions addressing those issues.
“The groups will also work on formulating bankable biodiversity projects that can be used as proposals for requesting funds from international, regional, and national financial institutions, as well as other potential donors interested in supporting biodiversity conservation in the region,” ESCWA said.
Despite facing severe biodiversity challenges driven by water scarcity, land degradation, desertification, and climate change, the region has been finding it difficult to raise adequate funding for biodiversity protection work, the UN body said.
In their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, the countries in the region had identified the need for $570 billion in climate finance, but by 2020, only $34.5 bln had materialised.
Of that amount, only about 30% was dedicated to adaptation, where funding for biodiversity interventions within agriculture, forestry, land, and water sit, ESCWA said.
“The inception meeting held at ESCWA was an important step to mobilise the engagement of diverse groups and stakeholders including governments, non-governmental organisations and financial institutions, to collectively examine and identify ways to address priority challenges affecting biodiversity in the region as Arab states seek to advance the achievement of global biodiversity and Sustainable Development Goals.”
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