Human survival and well-being depend upon biodiversity and healthy ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. India is one of the megadiverse countries in the world with over 1,00,690 species of fauna and over 47,800 species of flora. India’s economy and livelihoods of millions of people depend on preventing biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. The rich biological diversity is facing new challenges such as multiple-use landscapes, climate change, lack in technical and financial capacities to deal with emerging challenges of biodiversity conservation, its sustainable use, access and benefit sharing and biodiversity governance at local levels.
To address the global biodiversity loss, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognizes the importance and need for new and additional financial resources. At the Eleventh meeting of Conference of Parties (CoP11) of CBD held in Hyderabad during India’s Presidency of the CoP, the High Level Panel set up by the CBD on Global Assessment of Resources, found that the global investment required to implement CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 would cost between US$ 150 to US $ 440 billion annually.
Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), a global programme of UNDP, was launched in 2012, in response to the identified need by the CBD, to have better and adequate information to assess current expenditures and financing needs for countries to implement their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and need to have a comprehensive methodology to develop resource mobilization strategies and Biodiversity Finance Plans to implement NBSAPs.
BIOFIN provides an innovative methodology for countries to measure their current biodiversity expenditures, assess their financial needs for biodiversity conservation in the medium term and identify most suitable finance solutions to reduce their national biodiversity finance gaps.
BIOFIN was launched in India in May 2015. It is being led by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), hosted by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) and managed by UNDP India under the thematic pillar of Natural Resource Management and Biodiversity.
The ongoing phase II of BIOFIN aims to demonstrate implementation of select 3 finance solutions out of 12 potential finance solutions enlisted in the National Biodiversity Finance Plan-working document. This includes Corporate Social Responsibility, Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Public sector (agriculture sector) and Access and Benefit Sharing.
BIOFIN assessment indicates that implementation of the 12 finance solutions will require building of institutional and technical capacities of relevant public and private stakeholders across sectors which are dependent on or impact biodiversity either directly or indirectly.
UNDP seeks to engage an intern to support the BIOFIN India team in doing research, analysis and documentation for development of knowledge products and necessary background materials for activities under the financial solution on Corporate Social Responsibility.