Developed countries must urgently provide funding to developing countries on the frontline of the biodiversity crisis, says WWF

In the face of escalating impacts of the world’s nature and climate crises, including record-breaking temperatures and wildfires, WWF urges developed countries to commit greater funds to support developing countries’ conservation efforts in systems and places where they will have the greatest impact on people and nature.

WWF, the world’s largest conservation organization, warns that without urgent funding to support action on the frontline of the biodiversity crisis, the world risks hitting critical tipping points where the natural world will no longer be able to sustain us or regulate our climate.

The warning comes as world representatives meet at the 7th Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), in Vancouver, Canada, where they will launch the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBF Fund), a new source of funding for protecting species and ecosystems globally.

WWF joins BirdLife International, Campaign for Nature, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and The Pew Charitable Trusts in publishing an open letter calling for donor countries to arrive at the GEF Assembly ready to announce ambitious contributions to the GBF Fund, in line with their promises at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference, where the Fund was conceived.

The open letter stresses that the launch of the Fund is a critical moment to “jump-start resource mobilization for the immediate implementation of the new global biodiversity framework. It cannot be missed. A lack of financial support for the GBF Fund would risk undermining the consensus agreement from COP15 and jeopardising the implementation of the agreement as a whole.”

The agreement to establish a new Fund was one of the pivotal breakthroughs that enabled developed and developing countries to forge consensus on an ambitious new global biodiversity agreement at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference in December last year. The historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted in Montreal, Canada, commits the world to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and has been hailed as nature’s equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Failure by developed countries to announce new international funding for biodiversity action could potentially worsen the trust deficit between developed and developing countries. To date, no funding commitments have been made to the GBF Fund by donor countries ahead of its launch in Vancouver.

Nonetheless, the GBF Fund provides a new channel through which developed countries can deliver on funding for nature – under Target 19 of the KMGBF, countries have to generate at least US$200 billion per year by 2030 for biodiversity, with international financial resources for developing countries amounting to $20 billion USD per year by 2025 and $30 billion USD per year by 2030.