Agreements must be made to work, through political will backed by real resources

Working in partnership with a conservation NGO can bring real gains for biodiversity while achieving business goals Zoom In

Internationally agreed commitments to biodiversity conservation need to be enshrined in national legislation and made effective in practice. There is need for a dramatic scaling-up, both nationally and internationally, of the resources available for conservation, from a much wider range of sources – including the private sector.

Paper commitments must be turned into action

The negotiation and adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) represented a realisation of the crucial importance of biodiversity to national and global well-being. The evidence for this has strengthened further in the last decade, but while Parties to the CBD (see p. 66, box 1) make important commitments concerning the conservation of biodiversity, its sustainable use, and access to its benefits, these are only patchily and inadequately realised in national legislation and planning (see box 1). Under article 20(2) of the CBD, developed countries promised to make available .new and additional. financial resources to developing countries. These have failed to materialise, crippling conservation efforts in the developing world.

The mismatch between conservation costs and benefits needs addressing

The costs and benefits of biodiversity conservation are still very skewed at different scales. By and large, the costs are borne locally while the benefits accrue on a wider scale – nationally and globally (box 2). Covering the costs requires a major increase of the resources available to invest in conservation. There are many innovative ideas about how to go about this, including involving private donors, encouraging commercial sector investments and partnerships (box 3), and developing new markets for conservation-friendly products, ecosystem services and carbon credits. However, the amount of the resources needed is such that the major source must be tax revenue, raised by governments. Nationally and globally, those who benefit from biodiversity conservation, including its dispersed ecosystem services and existence values, must be prepared to pay for it, rather than watch it vanish.

Boxes: case studies and scientific analyses

Download SOWB pp.68–69 (PDF, 302 KB) containing the following:

1. National biodiversity legislation and planning are failing biodiversity and need strengthening
How well is the conservation of GTBs and IBAs addressed by 36 NBSAPs?

2. Those who enjoy the benefits of biodiversity conservation should pay the costs
Rough representation of the relative costs and benefits of conserving biodiversity

3. Businesses need to take biodiversity on board