Top environmental fund chief calls on countries
to defund activities ‘destroying’ nature
A new global fund for nature conservation alone won’t
do much to solve biodiversity crisis, says the CEO of the Global Environment
Facility.
BY LOUISE
GUILLOT
AUGUST 22,
2023 11:00 AM CET
Countries
have pledged to channel more money toward environmental protection — but that
won't be enough to tackle biodiversity loss if they also continue to pour cash
into sectors like the oil and gas industry that are damaging the environment,
according to the head of a top international environmental fund.
“The
political challenge is not mobilizing resources, it’s something more
complicated, [it's to] stop investing in those activities that destroy nature,”
said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an
international funding structure that assists countries in reaching global green
goals.
On that
front, “we are a million years behind where we need to be,” he warned.
His
comments come as countries gather in Vancouver starting Tuesday to discuss how
to boost international funding for nature conservation. As part of the meeting,
Rodríguez is set to launch a new fund to support developing countries in
reaching ambitious nature conservation targets agreed at last year's global
COP15 biodiversity summit.
The
creation of the fund was a key condition for developing countries to back the
final agreement. They argued they should be paid for efforts to protect
biodiversity — particularly when it prevents them from developing other
economic activities, like fossil fuel extraction, forestry or agriculture.
As part of
the deal, countries pledged to raise $200 billion for nature conservation from
public and private sources annually by 2030. Rich countries agreed to
contribute $20 billion per year by 2025 and $30 billion by 2030 to meet that
global goal — money that Rodríguez said he hopes will flow through the new
fund.
That's not
guaranteed: Countries can also decide to contribute money through bilateral
partnerships, instead of going through the GEF.
According
to Rodríguez, the new fund will make it easier and faster for developing
countries to access cash, with 36 percent of the money going to least developed
countries and small island developing states, and 20 percent toward supporting
indigenous peoples and local communities.
To kick off
the fund, the GEF needs to raise $200 million from rich donor countries by
December. The aim is for it to become a key mechanism to achieve the global
$200 billion goal agreed last year.
Hitting
this global target “is doable,” Rodríguez argued, as long as countries set “the
right conditions for development banks and private banks … [and] for the
private sector to fully internalize the negative externalities of contributing
to climate change and the loss of biodiversity.”
Still, that
money won't help countries reach ambitious global goals if it's not combined
with measures to address the root causes of biodiversity loss, he warned.
Subsidies
for activities harmful to the environment are estimated at between $500 billion
and $1.8 trillion a year worldwide. At COP15 last year, countries pledged to
cut $500 billion in environmentally harmful subsidies.
“We are a million years behind where we need to be,”
Carlos Manuel Rodríguez says | Convention on Biological Diversity
This week's
meeting "certainly should be where we start this conversation," said
Masha Kalinina, senior officer for international conservation at Pew Charitable
Trust, adding that it should be continued "in a serious way" at the
U.N. General Assembly in September.
The new
fund, she added, is key to helping ensure that nature conservation becomes
"economically viable" and "the best economic alternative ... to
harmful activities that destroy biodiversity."
But
Rodríguez said he isn't optimistic that countries will divert funds away from
harmful activities any time soon.
“I don't
think that this is going to happen if we still have petro-nations chairing the
climate convention,” he said, referring to the COP28 climate summit taking
place in Dubai later this year. The United Arab Emirates’ appointment of Sultan
Al-Jaber, who runs the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to head the
talks has sparked controversy.
There needs
to be a radical shift in global leadership to turn the tide on climate change
and biodiversity loss, he stressed, adding that he found it “worrisome” that
environment and climate ministers couldn’t agree on a plan to phase out fossil
fuels at last month's G20 meeting and that Amazon countries failed to commit to
end deforestation by 2030 earlier this month.
“We need a
change of guard," he said. "We need a new generation of politicians
that really believes in science, and really understands the tradeoffs and can
help us move the society with these irrational consumption and production
systems into a circular economy."
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