Briefing Note for UN Biodiversity Conference 2024 –Financial resources, debt and tax

The 16th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity kicks off in Cali, Colombia this week. While virtually all nations agree that much more needs to be done to slow the staggering pace at which species are going extinct, there are significant questions about how best to protect vulnerable landscapes and the communities that care for them. Many of these challenges are further complicated by questions of how to pay for conversation- and even more pointedly, who should pay for it. This briefing note from Biodiversity Capital Research Collective (of which CCI is part) lays out the key issues in play at COP16, arguing that:

● Increased public finance is necessary to implement the new Global Biodiversity Framework that was agreed at COP15 in 2022.
● Private finance is insufficient to achieve global biodiversity goals.
● Debt restructuring and cancellation for many countries across the Global South must be critical parts of international approach to biodiversity conservation
● Reform of the international tax system is one option to open up new sources of public finance for conservation
● Biodiversity policy could learn from the climate movement’s demand for Loss and Damage, and apply those lessons to conservation.