United Nations Environment Programme
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Webinar
Science Policy Actions for Renewed Knowledge (SPARK) Webinar Series On Environmental Financing
2 - 23 April 2024
Nairobi, Kenya
- Overview
- Documents
- Session 1
- Session 2
- Session 3
- Session 4
The ongoing impacts of climate change are placing increasing pressure on biodiversity and pushing many species to the brink of extinction. To address these challenges, global environmental frameworks such as the Rio Conventions offer guidance to both the public and private sector on a roadmap to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
The fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in December 2022, adopted the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM GBF), which sets out an ambitious roadmap for achieving a world living in harmony with nature by 2050. However, to reach the goals and targets outlined in this framework, there is a significant financing gap of $700 billion for biodiversity conservation.
Additionally, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) adaptation gap report identifies a $387 billion per year financing gap for implementing domestic adaptation priorities, and UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature identifies an imbalance in investment, with nature-negative flows from the private and public sector reaching almost $7 trillion per year, with only $200 billion per year is invested in nature-positive projects and activities. Addressing these financing gaps requires significant increases in funding and realigning financial flows from both the public and private sectors to support environmental objectives and priorities.
Against this backdrop, the Environmental Policy Unit within the Law Division of UNEP has organised a series of Spark Webinar Series
This new series is focused on the subject matter: Understanding Environmental Financing. The aim of this series is to enhance understanding to non-experts on the various components of environmental financing, including principles, approaches and terminologies, to better integrate them into program/project design and implementation to achieve global environmental goals.
For more information, contact Balakrishna Pisupati
Title: Introduction to Environmental Financing, Principles and Approaches and Terminologies
This webinar session focused on introducing Environmental Financing, Principles and Approaches and Terminologies. It emphasized the critical need to address the intersection of biodiversity conservation, restoration, protection, and environmental finance. It also highlighted the importance of enhancing environmentally sensitive policies at the country level and among donor communities and realigning domestic expenditure, engaging the international and private sector finance increasing and tailoring finance to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and, reforming global financial architecture is an impetus step in addressing existing and predicted environmental concerns.
Date: April 2, 2024
Time: 12-1 pm (EAT)
Webinar Recording
Title: Understanding Environmental Financing: Climate Financing
This session focused on the role of climate finance in addressing the three planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and the alignment of financial flows with sustainability objectives. These alignments are crucial for achieving global and national environmental goals, including those outlined in the Rio Conventions, while also tackling social adversities and implementing climate interventions such as air quality revitalization and nature protection and restoration.
Time: 12-1pm (EAT)
Webinar Recording
Title: Understanding Environmental Financing: Introduction to Nature Financing.
The session focused on the current state of investments in nature-based solutions, highlighting their insufficiency in meeting the goals outlined in the Rio Conventions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Nature finance emerges as an avenue to mobilize the private and public sector investment portfolios into nature initiatives and projects. By exploring innovative financing mechanisms, such as such as fixed income instruments, debt conversions, private equity and venture capital, actively managed funds, exchange-traded funds, and carbon and biodiversity credits, nature-investments can be mobilized to support national, regional, and international environmental goals for biodiversity and nature, in turn, advancing nature-based solutions investments.
Date: 16 April 2024
Time: 12-1 pm (EAT)
Highlights and Recommendations from Plenary
- Policy alignment and coherence are crucial for establishing and domesticating innovative financing mechanisms to achieve environmental objectives in the ocean ecosystem.
- Scaling up sustainable financing mechanisms at the country level to direct revenue generated from sustainable initiatives towards the conservation and protection objectives.
- Exploring pathways that enhance understanding of sustainable ocean investments among investment communities. Additionally, curriculums can consider the inclusion of ocean finance landscapes.
Title: Understanding Environmental Financing: Introduction to Ocean Financing
This session focused on ocean finance and its pivotal role in driving investments towards initiatives promoting the sustainable utilization of ocean resources including both renewable and non-renewable resources. Despite the oceans being the largest reservoir of natural capital globally and supporting our livelihoods, they face significant threats from unsustainable human activities and the three planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Ocean finance emerges as an option for driving investments towards initiatives promoting the sustainable utilization of ocean resources including both renewable and non-renewable resources. However, current levels of investment from both public and private sectors fall short, leading to a significant financing gap. Therefore, necessitating the need of mobilizing sufficient ocean finance to positively impact ocean ecosystems through the exploration and implementation of innovative financing instruments.
Date: 23 April 2024
Time: 12-1 pm (EAT)
Webinar Recording
