Financial Mechanism and Resources

IBD Dialogue on International Financing for Biodiversity: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Financing for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services


Ersin Essen
ProEcoServ Project Manager

Updates on United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.
UNEP has supported the process to establish the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, designed to create a common platform to facilitate improved policy uptake of contemporary science and assessment findings by Member States in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services. UNEP has developed a range of tools to support countries in understanding how to use ecosystem services to achieve their development goals and to generate multiple benefits to support attainment of the Aichi Targets and other biodiversity targets linked to multilateral environmental agreements. The UNEP-led initiative on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity (TEEB) provided the rationale and methodological guidance for the valuation and accounting of ecosystem services by Member States. The TEEB approach has proved to be a cornerstone for the transition towards green growth and green economy.
UNEP’s Medium Term Stratety (2014-2017)
In recent years, two important threads of research have documented how biodiversity is intertwined with development, quality of life, human well-being and nature: one thread articulates the linkages between biodiversity and other ecological issues, and the other explores the interrelationship between biodiversity and economics. It is now time to fully integrate the issue of biodiversity into the global ecological and economic agendas, while continuing to support biodiversity conservation, and integrating biodiversity across ecological and economic activities. While UNEP will continue to support biodiversity conservation and the involvement of local communities, bringing their traditional knowledge, the 2014–2017 medium term strategy moves further forward in integrating biodiversity across ecological and economic agendas, tackling such problems as invasive species and living modified organisms which pose a threat to the conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of ecosystem services.
Examples of biodiversity projects funded by UNEP in 2014-2015
The many global initiatives in place have led to an impressive groundswell at national level. UNEP now works in 58 countries, including through The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and VANTAGE, on the valuation of ecosystem services and natural capital accounting. At the global level, the UNEP Finance Initiative works with 43 financial institutions, with over $6.4 trillion of assets under management. These institutions committed to work towards integrating natural capital criteria into products and services by signing the Natural Capital Declaration. The UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative, backed by insurers representing 15 per cent of global insurance premium and $9 trillion in assets under management, is carrying out a global project to build climate- and disaster-resilient communities and economies, highlighting the role of natural ecosystems, alongside man-made infrastructure, in reducing cyclone, earthquake and flood risk. In addition, the Inclusive Wealth Project, a joint initiative between UNEP, the UN University International Human Dimensions Programme and UNESCO, launched the Inclusive Wealth Report 2014, which looks beyond the limited yardstick of Gross Domestic Product to take into account natural resources and social dimensions of wealth. The 2014 report expanded the initial study to produce an index of 140 countries, and found average positive growth in per-capita inclusive wealth—and thus progress toward sustainable development—in 85 of the 140 countries evaluated.
Since 2000, UNEP has implemented over 300 GEF funded projects to conserve biodiversity. Total GEF grant allocated for these projects has been over 500 million USD. UNEP has supported over 150 countries in implementing these projects.
UNEP is also working to support the development and updating of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), a key means of implementing the strategic plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in 81 countries—17 of which, by the end of 2014, had integrated the ecosystem approach in their NBSAPs. Meanwhile, the NBSAP Forum has reached over 1,000 members, providing support to the updating and mainstreaming of NBSAPs.

Biodiversity-related funding policies and programmes
UNEP works with developing countries to promote a transition to integrating the conservation and management of land, water and living resources to maintain biodiversity and provide ecosystem services sustainably and equitably among countries. For that purpose UNEP works to enhance the conceptual basis and implementation of the ecosystem approach within planning, management and decision-making frameworks that affect biodiversity, the ecosystem services of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and the provision of key services and benefits from those systems. In addition, UNEP works to develop cross-sectoral policy-making and management frameworks and methodologies to implement ecosystem-based management and related multilateral frameworks in order to sustain marine and coastal biodiversity and ecosystem services, particularly food provisioning. Finally, UNEP supports collaborative efforts aimed at strengthening the science-policy interface at global, regional and national levels. Noting the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its critical role in maintaining ecosystems that provide essential services, UNEP assists countries to create the necessary institutional, legal and policy conditions to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem services into their development planning, decision-making and budgetary allocations.

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