DPC stresses biodiversity funding

An expert group of the Development Policy Committee (DPC) viewed that Finland must pay stronger and more consistent attention to biodiversity in its development policy and international advocacy work.

The DPC expert group published its analysis on Friday suggesting that developing countries should be supported in their efforts to implement biodiversity agreements, said the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in a press release.

According to the analysis, it is important that biodiversity and the protection of the environment go hand in hand with the fight against climate change in all Finnish activities.

The importance of biodiversity is not yet sufficiently reflected in policy guidelines concerning development cooperation, especially not in practice.

The group of experts considers it important that biodiversity be included in the next government report on development policy, which sets out principles to be applied across government terms.

Biodiversity should be approached both as a cross-cutting objective and as a key theme under the fourth priority (climate change and natural resources) of Finland’s development policy. This is to safeguard the protection of biodiversity in all development cooperation.

Funding for biodiversity has been falling sharply since 2011. The majority of the funding allocated by Finland to biodiversity is multilateral funding channelled via international organisations, mainly to the Global Environment Fund (GEF). The work of CSOs is also supported. In contrast, biodiversity has featured very little in bilateral development cooperation in recent years.