A prominent explanation for the international failure to progress on biodiversity targets has been a lack of financial resources1,2,3. The focus on filling this funding gap with innovative, private-sector financial schemes tends to treat austerity — diminished public investment in public services and systems — as an immutable reality. But enticing private finance has serious limits: a recent expert report on finance and biodiversity commissioned by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) concluded that private finance alone “will never be sufficient for meeting all of the challenges of achieving the post-2020 global biodiversity framework”4. There is a growing conversation suggesting that the most effective approach will be to arrest the flows of biodiversity-degrading finance, which massively eclipse spending on protection and sustainable use of biodiversity3,5, while dramatically increasing public finance for biodiversity, particularly in the Global South4. We must move beyond simply attempting to fill the funding gap, and initiate transformative change that addresses underlying drivers of biodiversity loss
