On May 2, 2024, a seminar entitled Financing for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Towards a New Financial System for Biodiversity Protection and Climate Action was held in Bogotá, Colombia, organized jointly by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia. The event aimed to facilitate discussion of the importance of the financial system playing a more active role in the transition to nature-positive development models that would foster improved productivity and greater inclusion. This has acquired more relevance ahead of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will be held in the city of Cali in late October of this year.
During the seminar, participants presented and discussed topics related to financing for biodiversity protection, with particular emphasis on current demand for investment mechanisms that would leverage the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions, along with the potential of innovative financial mechanisms to obtain this financing and the enabling conditions for them to be scaled up.
The opening session was led by the Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Ricardo Bonilla, and featured remarks by the IDB’s Representative in Colombia, Ramiro López-Ghio, and the Deputy Director-General for Foresight and Development at Colombia’s National Department of Planning, Mario Alejandro Valencia, who echoed the Minister’s welcome to participants and presented a brief summary of the challenges and opportunities in the country and region for moving forward on the green finance agenda.
The Deputy Minister of Policy and Environmental Normalization in Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Mauricio Cabrera, presented an overview of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, along with news on the updating of the country’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). ECLAC also laid out critical elements in the connection between climate finance and biodiversity, in remarks by Santiago Lorenzo, Head of the Economy of Climate Change Unit in the Commission’s Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division. A panel on these issues was carried out by directors of public financial-sector entities and private sector investors, who shared their perspectives on the challenges, opportunities and current demand for mechanisms to invest in Nature-Based Solutions.
The agenda then turned to innovative financial mechanisms that would allow for rapidly increasing the mobilization of resources for biodiversity, starting with a discussion of lessons learned in relation to this type of mechanism, which the Fund for Environmental Action and Childhood (Fondo Acción) has developed in its more than 20 years of experience investing in sustainable projects to benefit the environment and children in Colombia. After that, a second panel took place on which leaders and specialists from the Finance Ministry, the IDB and private sector organizations gave their impressions regarding the potential of mechanisms such as debt-for-nature swaps, results-based incentives and blended finance, among others, and regarding the enabling conditions for scaling them up.
Finally, the Director of ECLAC’s Office in Colombia, Ángela Penagos, summed up some of the most relevant ideas and reflections presented at the event, which emphasized the need to reflect deeply on the role that private banks and development banks should play in order to promote and scale up suitable mechanisms and instruments for preserving biodiversity and the ecosystems that sustain it.
