The effectiveness of national biodiversity investments to protect the wealth of nature

The current state, opportunities and challenges for upscaling private investment in biodiversity in Europe

European countries have committed to ambitious upscaling of privately funded nature conservation. We review the status and drivers of biodiversity finance in Europe. By implementing semistructured interviews with 25 biodiversity finance key informants and three focus groups across Europe, we explore opportunities and challenges for upscaling private investment in nature. Opportunities arise from macroeconomic and regulatory changes, along with various technological and financial innovations and growing professional experience. However, persistent barriers to upscaling include the ongoing lack of highly profitable investment opportunities and the multitude of risks facing investors, including political, ecological and reputational risks influencing supply and demand of investment opportunities. Public policy plays the foundational role in creating and hindering these mechanisms. Public policy can create nature markets and investment opportunities, meanwhile agricultural subsidies and poor coordination between public funding sources undermine the supply of return-seeking investment opportunities. Investors demand derisking investments from uncertainties; in part caused by political uncertainty. These markets require profound state intervention to enable upscaling whilst achieving positive ecological outcomes; private investment will probably not upscale without major public policy change and public investment.

Overcoming the coupled climate and biodiversity crises and their societal impacts

Earth's biodiversity and human societies face pollution, overconsumption of natural resources, urbanization, demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities, and habitat loss, many of which are exacerbated by climate change. Here, we review links among climate, biodiversity, and society and develop a roadmap toward sustainability. These include limiting warming to 1.5°C and effectively conserving and restoring functional ecosystems on 30 to 50% of land, freshwater, and ocean "scapes." We envision a mosaic of interconnected protected and shared spaces, including intensively used spaces, to strengthen self-sustaining biodiversity, the capacity of people and nature to adapt to and mitigate climate change, and nature's contributions to people. Fostering interlinked human, ecosystem, and planetary health for a livable future urgently requires bold implementation of transformative policy interventions through interconnected institutions, governance, and social systems from local to global levels.

Too few, too late: U.S. Endangered Species Act undermined by inaction and inadequate funding

This year, the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will meet to finalize a post 2020-framework for biodiversity conservation, necessitating critical analysis of current barriers to conservation success. Here, we tackle one of the enduring puzzles about the U.S. Endangered Species Act, often considered a model for endangered species protection globally: Why have so few species been successfully recovered? For the period of 1992-2020, we analyzed trends in the population sizes of species of concern, trends in the time between when species are first petitioned for listing and when they actually receive protection, and trends in funding for the listing and recovery of imperiled species. We find that small population sizes at time of listing, coupled with delayed protection and insufficient funding, continue to undermine one of the world's strongest laws for protecting biodiversity.

The future of sub-Saharan Africa’s biodiversity in the face of climate and societal change

Many of the world’s most biodiverse regions are found in the poorest and second most populous continent of Africa; a continent facing exceptional challenges. Africa is projected to quadruple its population by 2100 and experience increasingly severe climate change and environmental conflict—all of which will ravage biodiversity. Here we assess conservation threats facing Africa and consider how these threats will be affected by human population growth, economic expansion, and climate change. We then evaluate the current capacity and infrastructure available to conserve the continent’s biodiversity. We consider four key questions essential for the future of African conservation: (1) how to build societal support for conservation efforts within Africa; (2) how to build Africa’s education, research, and management capacity; (3) how to finance conservation efforts; and (4) is conservation through development the appropriate approach for Africa? While the challenges are great, ways forward are clear, and we present ideas on how progress can be made. Given Africa’s current modest capacity to address its biodiversity crisis, additional international funding is required, but estimates of the cost of conserving Africa’s biodiversity are within reach. The will to act must build on the sympathy for conservation that is evident in Africa, but this will require building the education capacity within the continent. Considering Africa’s rapidly growing population and the associated huge economic needs, options other than conservation through development need to be more effectively explored. Despite the gravity of the situation, we believe that concerted effort in the coming decades can successfully curb the loss of biodiversity in Africa.