BIOFIN capacity building in China
On December 6th 2022, the the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) UNDP Beijing office organized a seminar “Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN)”, first of the series of seminars that aim to promote the implementation of the biodiversity financing mechanism of the “Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework”. Experts from the UNDP, the International Research Institute of Green Finance (IIGF) of the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), the Environmental Planning Research Institute of the Shandong Province, the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences and the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange were invited to introduce their projects and exchange views on the topic.
Dr. Ma Chaode, Assistant Representative of the United Nations Development Program in China, delivered an opening speech for the seminar. Professor Wang Yao, Dean of the International Institute of Green Finance, Central University of Finance and Economics, was invited to participate in the seminar, and discussed the status quo of biodiversity finance and BIOFIN The overall framework of the methodology was introduced on site. Ola Janus, a researcher at the International Institute of Green Finance at the Central University of Finance and Economics, and Cheng Haosheng, a UNDP project assistant, co-chaired the meeting.
In his opening speech, Dr. Ma Chaode introduced that the current state of biodiversity and called for urgent protection of nature that requires a lot of financial support. In this context, in the past few years, the progress made by the BIOFIN project and the financing mechanism that the project team will implement is going to provide guidance to the future development of biodiversity finance in China.
Professor Wang Yao gave a lacture on biodiversity finance and major developments in China as well as the the overall framework of the BIOFIN methodology. According to incomplete statistics, the global funding gap for biodiversity conservation is as high as 700 billion U.S. dollars every year, and the financing gap also exposes the problem that the financing activities of ecologically damaging projects are more than the financing activities of ecological protection projects. Prof. Wang introduced that in the BIOFIN methodological framework, PIR (Review of Biodiversity Financial Policy and Mechanism), BER (Biodiversity Expenditure Review), FNA (Finance Needs Assessment) and other methodologies can be used to promote synergistic analysis, thereby summarizing and proposing BFP (Biodiversity Financing Program), and final implementation. Through the selected BFP, countries can allocate and utilize financial resources more effectively through existing greening department budgets, so as to reduce the demand for biodiversity investment and increase resources for biodiversity conservation.