The Little Biodiversity Finance Book - 3rd edition (2012)

The third edition of the Little Biodiversity Finance Book is the new, revised guide to proactive investment in natural capital (PINC) and an introduction to financing options for biodiversity and ecosystems services. It is being released on 5 June 2012 - World Environment Day.

The aim of the book is to help key stakeholders including governments, NGOs, the private sector, indigenous peoples and local communities to compare existing and future options for biodiversity and ecosystem finance in a clear and consistent way.

Based on the latest available information, the 2012 edition of the book identifies sources of finance that can be harnessed to raise up to USD 159 billion by 2020 to help meet the target of halting global biodiversity loss. This loss is currently costing at least USD 740 billion annually in lost ecosystem services that are vital to our economies and our well-being.

The book’s authors find that funding for biodiversity and ecosystem services was USD 51.8 billion in 2010, the year in which the world missed the CBD target to “achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss”.

They argue that even greater levels of finance will be needed if we are to meet the more ambitious and wide-reaching Aichi Targets, agreed in 2010. In order to achieve these targets by 2020, all 17 finance generation mechanisms discussed in the book must be harnessed – no single mechanism or group of mechanisms can alone scale-up finance to the level required by 2020.

Crucially, however, the distribution of biodiversity finance must also change; 78% of finance is currently generated in developed countries, but as much as 59% is also delivered in those same countries, while only 41% is delivered in developing countries where the majority of the world’s biodiversity exists and the impacts of biodiversity loss are most strongly felt.

The book was first launched on October 20th 2010 at the UN biodiversity conference in Nagoya, Japan, where leaders met to discuss new and innovative ways to finance biodiversity and ecosystems.