- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2024
Supporting the Biodiversity Finance Solutions
The European Commission supports Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands to identify, prioritise and design evidence-based comprehensive reform for biodiversity finance solutions and identification of Environmentally Harmful Subsidies. The technical support project addresses the need of EU Member States to engage businesses and find innovative finance solutions to achieve their national biodiversity targets. The project is aligned with the TSI 2025 Flagship on Resilience of Natural Resources
Context
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, is a significant achievement at global level with concrete and ambitious targets to integrate biodiversity in decision-making, encourage and enable business engagement for biodiversity; identify and phase out or reform harmful incentives; and mobilise financing. As Parties of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the EU and each Member State must translate the 23 global targets into specific measures by 2030, prepare national biodiversity strategies and identify and reform harmful subsidies. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 provides a comprehensive plan to halt biodiversity loss and restore nature across the EU, supported by a range of EU instruments under the European Green Deal - notably the new EU Nature Restoration Regulation.
National implementation will go hand in hand with EU financial support. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed, “there is a clear economic case for preserving and restoring nature”, and we need to ‘get nature on the balance sheet', to create “an efficient system of rewards and incentives” and “a market for restoring our planet"
Support Delivered
The European Commission provides support to Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands to:
- Develop and share good practices to mobilise biodiversity finance solutions
- Identify financial needs as well as the challenges and opportunities to reach national, federal or regional biodiversity objectives
- Support the preparation of National Biodiversity Finance Plans with concrete Finance solutions to prevent biodiversity loss
- Integrate biodiversity objectives into public budgetary policies – including the identification of harmful subsidies and exploration of reform options.
Expected results
It is expected that EU Member States increase their capacity to collect and report data on harmful subsidies, which will help them to make policy decision based on evidence. Furthermore, the project will enable to put in place systems to realign financial flows and mobilise resources across all sectors, including the private sector, to fill the biodiversity finance gap. Lastly, it is expected that thanks to the multi-country nature of the project, mutual learning and peer-to peer exchanges will further help other Member States to progress in fulfilling their commitments, action plans and approaches to avoid biodiversity loss.
Useful links
Key note speech Nathalie Berger, Director, DG REFORM, Support to Member States