The ongoing impacts of climate change are placing increasing pressure on biodiversity and pushing many species to the brink of extinction. To address these challenges, global environmental frameworks such as the Rio Conventions offer guidance to both the public and private sector on a roadmap to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
The fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in December 2022, adopted the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM GBF), which sets out an ambitious roadmap for achieving a world living in harmony with nature by 2050. However, to reach the goals and targets outlined in this framework, there is a significant financing gap of $700 billion for biodiversity conservation.
Additionally, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) adaptation gap report identifies a $387 billion per year financing gap for implementing domestic adaptation priorities, and UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature identifies an imbalance in investment, with nature-negative flows from the private and public sector reaching almost $7 trillion per year, with only $200 billion per year is invested in nature-positive projects and activities. Addressing these financing gaps requires significant increases in funding and realigning financial flows from both the public and private sectors to support environmental objectives and priorities.
Against this backdrop, the Environmental Policy Unit within the Law Division of UNEP has organised a series of Spark Webinar Series
This new series is focused on the subject matter: Understanding Environmental Financing. The aim of this series is to enhance understanding to non-experts on the various components of environmental financing, including principles, approaches and terminologies, to better integrate them into program/project design and implementation to achieve global environmental goals.
For more information, contact Balakrishna Pisupati