Dr. Najma Mohamed
Policy Advisor
Green Fund
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Updates on Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) The DBSA, a regional development finance institution head-quartered in South Africa, seeks to advance its “development impact in the region by expanding access to development finance and effectively integrating and implementing sustainable development solutions”. The DBSA actively supports and reinforces national policy objectives and priorities in its operations, including key national biodiversity legislation, such as the White Paper on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of South Africa’s Biological Diversity and the Biodiversity Act of 2004. The DBSA has also participated actively in various activities of the National Business and Biodiversity Network, launched in South Africa in 2013 to assist businesses to integrate and mainstream biodiversity issues into their strategies.
Since 2012, the DBSA manages and implements the Green Fund of South Africa, a national environmental finance mechanism which seeks to support environmental initiatives to catalyse South Africa’s transition to low-carbon, resource-efficient and pro-employment development path. The Fund support environmental initiatives across three funding windows, including an Environmental and Natural Resource Management window which envisions the development of resilient eco-system services supporting the long term development path of South Africa.
In 2014, the DBSA became one of five accredited national project agencies of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and one of its first submissions to the GEF has been in the biodiversity thematic area in 2015. The Project Identification Form, entitled, ‘Unlocking Biodiversity Benefits through Development Finance in Critical Catchments’, will be tabled at the GEF Council meeting in June 2015. The DBSA has also submitted an application for accreditation to the Green Climate Fund in 2015, and is strategically positioned to enable direct access to climate finance.
Examples of biodiversity projects funded by Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) in 2014-2015 Through the Green Fund, the DBSA has supported a wide range of projects and programmes which further biodiversity conservation objectives in South Africa. To date, approximately 30% of the Green Fund project portfolio is within the Environmental and Natural Resource Management funding window, with investments in biodiversity benefiting businesses, sustainable farming and wildlife management. The research portfolio of the Fund, which supports innovative research projects to advance South Africa’s green economy transition is supporting a number of biodiversity-related applied research projects, including two initiatives related to investment in ecosystem services (water). In the capacity development portfolio, the Green Fund is delivering a national green jobs training programme, the fourth offering in this training programme, Green Jobs in Natural Resources (September 2015), will introduce the concept of green jobs to key stakeholders involved biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management as well as soil and land management which are purported to hold the highest potential for the creation of green jobs in South Africa.
Biodiversity-related funding policies and programmes In addition to the mandate of the Green Fund to support biodiversity-related investments, the DBSA has partnered with the Department of Science and Technology in South Africa to undertake a national study which will develop an investment framework for ecological infrastructure. It is hoped that this study can address the insufficient investment of financial resources, as well as the lack of financial models for investing in biodiversity conservation and management in South Africa. This study will be completed in in 2015.
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