Foreword

Biodiversity – the variety of life on earth – underpins the well-being of billions of people every day. It provides a myriad of ecosystem services, such as the provision of food, clean water and air, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. The economic value of these services, although often ignored in decision-making, are vast and should also be highlighted. Globally, they are estimated to range between 125 and 140 trillion dollars per year, far more than the world’s gross domestic product.

Despite our dependency on biodiversity, large-scale inefficiencies of our production and consumption systems are driving the planet towards its sixth mass extinction. In the space of a few decades, we have appropriated vast swathes of the planet for human use, destroying and degrading terrestrial, marine and aquatic ecosystems.

Biodiversity and ecosystem services are essential in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Governments, businesses and civil society must scale up action to halt and reverse the global decline in biodiversity. The year 2020 is a crucial milestone as it marks the end of the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and its Aichi Targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Governments will meet in China for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to adopt a post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Strong leadership, political will and multilateral co-operation are vital to ensure that the post-2020 framework can steer clear, transformative, ambitious and measurable action at the national and international level.

This report, Biodiversity: Finance and the Economic and Business Case for Action, provides an important and timely contribution to the CBD COP15. It was prepared as input to the G7 Meeting of Environment Ministers held on 5-6 May 2019, at the request of the French G7 Presidency. The report provides evidence-based analysis on the economic and business case for biodiversity action. It presents a preliminary assessment of finance flows for biodiversity, and discusses the data and indicator gaps that need to be addressed to more effectively monitor the pressures on biodiversity and the actions taken to address them. The report also identifies ten priority action areas where G7 and other governments can focus their efforts to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss.

We are proud of the OECD’s leadership on biodiversity at this critical time, and we look forward to supporting the present and future G7 Presidencies in follow-up work on biodiversity, as requested in the G7 Communiqué and Metz Charter on biodiversity. Our aim is to advance the understanding of global biodiversity finance, as well as of the mainstreaming measures and indicators to support the development of the post-2020 framework.

Angel Gurría

Secretary-General, OECD