5.4 conclusions and recommendations

The FNA process ends with the presentation of detailed conclusions and recommendations. The detailed results of the FNA should be captured in a report that illustrates their robustness for decision-making. The FNA’s impact ultimately depends on the success of preceding approaches to build stakeholder and decision makers’ engagement.

The main output is a written report accompanied by a spreadsheet with detailed budget information. The FNA results ideally should be shared broadly with and validated by government, private and third sector stakeholders. The aim is for the report to be adopted and the estimations included in official financial planning and budgeting. Pending the government’s decision, FNA figures can be useful for many reporting frameworks, including CBD financial reporting. It is also important to communicate and disseminate the main findings to stakeholders. Therefore, in addition to the report, summaries can be developed for different audiences, such as briefings for the high-level decision makers.

Clear and well-supported recommendations are essential to shift the analysis from a technical report to action-oriented, ‘projectized’ document. Conclusions and recommendations, therefore, should be precise and expressed clearly. The conclusions can include the significance of the finance needs and gaps described in the previous sections. Conclusions also can explore biodiversity priorities, financial issues, costeffectiveness, the scale of the costs relative to other sectors and the contribution of biodiversity to key sector dependencies on natural resources, etc.

Potential recommendations include:

Better inclusion of biodiversity results in national policies and planning

The linking of existing and proposed finance solutions to specific targets, organizations, and results, etc

The integration of the FNA into the regular national budget planning cycle and institutionalization of the FNA process in the environmental sector

The outline of the Biodiversity Finance Plan:

A. Executive summary

Highlight main findings and recommendations in a clear and concise manner.

B. Acknowledgements

C. Introduction

Include the links to other BIOFIN reports and the structure of the report. Keep the introduction brief.

D. Methodology

Briefly outline the FNA methodology. Explain the stakeholder engagement process and the main hypotheses. Describe sources of data. Detailed tables can be provided the appendices.

E. Results

Present overall figures of the costing using the cost statement and gaps tables. Each table should be supported with a clear explanation of what is in the table and a brief analysis of its content.
Several cost statements can be prepared depending on the “client” interests. Compare the costs and priority of different biodiversity results. Aggregate by categories, by national priorities (targets), organizations and by sectors as relevant.

F. Biodiversity Investment Needs

This is the core of the report. Where do the data indicate there is the greatest need and how could biodiversity finance tools address these needs?

G. Conclusions and Recommendations

Distil the main conclusions and recommendations, including policy and technical recommendations.
Include recommendations on how to embed the elements of FNA costing into the institutions covered; to better integrate biodiversity costs in national and subnational budgeting processes; to better integrate biodiversity budgets in related sectors (indirect); and other ways in which the results can be used for improved biodiversity management and financing.
Where costing has defined detailed finance solutions, this information should be transferred to use in the technical description of potential solutions in the BFP (Chapter 7).

H. References

I . Annexes

Detailed methodology
Detailed data sheets
Glossary
Supporting detail for recommendations

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