‘Talk the talk Finance Ministers understand’ to unlock funds for biodiversity, experts say.

Policymakers and experts from around the world stressed the need to effectively engage with Ministries of Finance to unlock funds for biodiversity conservation at a major side event at the 12th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea on October 16th.

The day-long ‘Transformative Initiatives in Biodiversity Mainstreaming and Financing’ showcased interconnected initiatives that aim to mainstream biodiversity, ecosystem services and their values into policy frameworks, accounting systems and budgeting processes.

Guillermo Zuñiga, former Finance Minister of Costa Rica, said ‘Biodiversity is a core part of national development. It’s not an expenditure, it’s an investment’. He encouraged all those seeking to unlock more finance for biodiversity to ‘speak the language the Finance Ministers understand’.

'Speak in numbers'

The point of communicating to get the right response from those that hold government purse-strings was made by many participants throughout the day.  

‘We must talk the same language they talk’ said Carlos Manuel Rodrigues, Senior Vice President of Conservation International. ‘Ministers of Finance want facts. They want numbers. They want to know how much you will receive out of this or that investment’.

‘When I learned that they speak in numbers - I talked to them in that way’ said Mr. Rodrigues, who was formerly Costa Rica's Minister of Environment and Energy.

Speaking at a high level roundtable on ‘building the business case to secure global natural capital’, Nik Sekhran, UNDP’s Chief of Sustainable Development, said: ‘If you don’t come to the table understanding how the Ministry of Finance is looking at the budget and looking at you as institution to see how effective you are – to see if you are good ‘bang for your buck’ - you’re not going to get anywhere’.

‘That’s how our Biodiversity Finance Initiative was born. It was a recognition that we needed to have a tool that allowed us to work with Ministries of Finance, through Ministries of Finance, led by Ministries of Finance - ideally’.

UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) helps governments cost, plan and pay for action on biodiversity.

Mr. Sekhran went on to explain that ‘the heart of the matter is that Ministries of Environment feel disenfranchised. They don’t feel like they’re getting a good domestic deal - and the reason for that is that they’re not able to make the case’.

‘Ultimately it’s the Ministries of Finance that decide how domestic resources and ODA are spent. So we need to be speaking to them’ he said.

'Institutional surgery' 

A number of participants, including Chencho Norbu, Director General of the Department of Forest and Park Services of Bhutan, urged all to ‘come together’ at the at the local level ‘for effective implementation of policies’.

Carlos Manuel Rodrigues agreed. ‘The best model is one agency working on the landscape. We can’t work well when the forestry service is under the Ministry of Agriculture. It should be moved to the Ministry of Environment.’

‘Some countries need major institutional surgery’ he added. ‘BIOFIN can trigger the process of reform through dialogue. It will also educate and train major, senior policy makers on how they can be more efficient and more smart on nature conservation’.

‘As a former Minister, I very easily get to the conclusion that BIOFIN is exactly what I needed at that time’ he said.

Sustainable Development Goals 

The high level panel discussion covered biodiversity financing in the post-2015 development agenda and the upcoming sustainable development goals (SDGs).

‘The SDG framework finally brought together the economic, social and environment dimensions’ said Ivo Havinga, Chief of Economics Statistics in the UN Statistics Division. ‘The Environment has a very important role in solving other problems like poverty, inequality and other issues’.

‘We need accountability, we need solid statistics. We have to measure these flows. We have to measure them well. We have international standards on measuring economic aspects and these are used by Ministries of Finance’ he said.

Bill Rahill, the World Bank’s Director of Environment and Natural Resources Management, urged  ‘commitment from the public sector, the private sector and also the financial sector’ to meet the SDGs, stressing that ‘a unique place to start is around natural capital.’

‘We’re going to need something like BIOFIN for the SDGs’ said UNDP’s Nik Sekhran. ‘The cost of achieving them will be in the trillions of dollars. It’s a universal agenda, very broad. There will never be enough ODA to cover all of it’ he said.

Other topics included work on environmental-economic measurement and accounting of natural capital; the coding of biodiversity expenditures; economic valuation of natural capital; effective changes in institutions and policies, including the reduction of biodiversity-harmful subsidies; reviews of public and private expenditures on biodiversity; the costing of the full implementation of national biodiversity strategies and their targets; and a review of a range of biodiversity financing mechanisms.

The event was organised by UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) together with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank’s WAVES Partnership, the UNEP-TEEB Initiative, the UN Statistics Division and the OECD.