During the PIR (Chapter 3) there will have been a detailed review of the NBSAP and other key national biodiversityrelated strategies. If the NBSAP was determined insufficiently comprehensive for the costing exercise, other national plans and strategies should be included at this stage. The main documents to review alongside the NBSAP in this step were identified in the PIR under the section covering the national biodiversity vision. The scoping will also assess how the BIOFIN Process can support the refinement of the above strategies and plans, including clarification of quantitative targets and indicators to define costable actions. Many countries have used the NBSAP as the starting point, but some (e.g. Chile, Fiji, Malaysia) have expanded their analysis to better mainstream biodiversity into national development plans.

Each country should choose the most appropriate scope of the FNA based on:

1. Comprehensiveness and quality of the NBSAP;

2. Greatest biodiversity impact potential; and

3. Stated interest of important decision makers.

NBSAPs and other strategic documents tend to include actions are either difficult to cost or stated in general terms. If the action or target is too broad, it should be divided up into its elements and more specific activities that will contribute to achieving stated results. A generic strategy such as “protect endangered species” would need to be linked to a specific result statement such as “decrease poaching incidents of elephants by 30 percent”, and a related set of outputs and activities (such as increasing the number of rangers, strengthening the prosecution of illegal wildlife trade cases, etc.). Using a costing catalogue can help translate these actions into costable units. Also, not all activities or actions are costable. Some are political or coordination decisions with zero or minimal costs attached. The team should decide if these actions should be included in the FNA; countries may prefer to include them even though achieving them does not depend on funding allocations.

It is important to link the FNA process to results that are meaningful to decision makers (e.g. water resources management, livelihoods), making them more likely to act. The FNA could become, when relevant, the baseline and guidance to develop an actual budget. This can be facilitated by using government budget categories and unit costs for the costing process, building on existing national and subnational budgeting and planning processes, and engaging with the right stakeholders and decision makers throughout the process. A catalogue of costs is a useful tool in this process. See Box 5.4.