Financial Mechanism and Resources

Public sector financing

Status and trends
National/sub-regional development banks, public or publicly-mandated, can provide the majority of their green finance commitment at concessional terms. A coalition of twenty development banks, with total assets of more than US$ 2.1 trillion, estimated that their total green finance reached US$ 95 billion in 2012.

Sovereign wealth funds have seen their assets grow by 59% between 2008 and 2012 because of rising commodity prices, and over 32 sovereign wealth funds have been created since 2005. Assets under management of SWFs reached at least $6.3 trillion in 2013. Countries with SWFs funded by commodities' exports, primarily oil and gas exports, totalled $3.78 trillion, and non-commodity SWFs totalled $2.5 trillion.

State-owned enterprises: of the 2000 largest companies, 204 have been identified as majority SOEs in 2010 with ownership spread across 37 different countries. The combined sales of the 204 SOEs amount to USD 3.6 trillion, equivalent to almost 6% of world GDP, and their combined market value (USD 4.9 trillion) corresponds to 11% of global market capitalization of all listed companies. They are particularly active in five sectors with the highest shares are: mining support activities; civil engineering; land transport and transport via pipelines; mining of coal and lignite; and the extraction of crude petroleum and gas, which have high impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Accounting
Counting public sector investments into biodiversity and ecosystem services may be built upon existing efforts, such as on climate finance. Among the US$95 billion green finance from some twenty development banks, US$200 million was used for species conservation, US$1.95 billion for mitigation measures in agriculture, forestry and land use, and US$14 billion in agriculture natural resources and ecosystem based adaptation, water preservation, coastal protection and other disaster risk reduction. The latter two items are of direct benefits to biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, information related to biodiversity-related performance of sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises is generally lacking.

Ideas of mobilization
  • National/sub-regional development banks introduce and implement explicit strategies and operational guidelines on financing biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • Global and regional networks of national/sub-regional development banks are established to promote consideration of financing biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • Awareness to the long-term inter-generational returns of investing in biodiversity and ecosystem services is raised among the sovereign wealth funds and other public funds
  • Investment portfolios of biodiversity and ecosystem services are developed, taking into account the specific needs of the sovereign wealth funds and other public funds, including return guarantees
  • State owned enterprises are required to develop and implement policies on biodiversity and ecosystem services and their performance measurement includes impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • State owned enterprises on biodiversity and ecosystem services are established to transform the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • A global survey of biodiversity-related operations of state-owned enterprises is conducted on a regular basis in order to monitor and inform on their impacts