With human population estimated to exceed 9.7 billion people by 2050 and an accelerating scope of anthropogenic impacts on the biosphere, global efforts to mobilize resources for ecosystem conservation and management have become increasingly important. Estimates of the existing financial flows towards, and the future needs for, ecosystem conservation and management remain critical information needs for policy makers. For example, 2020 marks the next meeting of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, where global targets for biodiversity conservation resources for the coming decade will be identified. Here, we quantify the current gap in financial resources needed for global biodiversity conservation and identify the options available to address it. Viewing biodiversity conservation as encompassing efforts to both sustain species-level diversity as well as efforts to maintain or restore ecosystem composition, structure, and function underpinning global biodiversity, we survey financial mechanisms deriving from public, philanthropic, and private capital sectors to provide a high level overview of the mechanisms available to address the biodiversity conservation funding gap. By highlighting the need for synergy across ecology, policy, and finance to address biodiversity conservation, we seek to catalyze efforts to adequately finance nature globally.
Results/Conclusions
Consolidating available analyses on the financial resource needs for protected areas, for mitigating urban impacts on surrounding ecosystems, for sustainably managing working land- and seascapes, for restoring coastal ecosystems, and for global invasive species management, we find that financial resources allocated towards ecosystem conservation and management may need to increase by a factor of 4-5X to adequately meet global biodiversity conservation needs. Addressing this gap will require a plurality of approaches to both reduce the need for biodiversity conservation funding, and to mobilize additional financial resources. Currently, public funding makes up >80% of global annual expenditures towards biodiversity conservation. A key opportunity in this sector to support biodiversity conservation includes reforming subsidies to reduce deleterious anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems. While increases in public spending sufficient to address the funding gap are unlikely, the private sector provides an important frontier in mobilizing resources for biodiversity conservation. Biodiversity offsets connect financial resources for required or desired ecological harm mitigation through private markets. Green lending provides opportunity to direct private capital towards projects with beneficial ecological outcomes while achieving financial returns. Finally, widespread adoption of sustainable supply chain management will be vital for integrating biodiversity conservation considerations into the ordinary course of business.