FAPBM has invited actors of the Protected Areas System of Madagascar to the semi-annual meeting of the Coalition for Private Investments in Conservation, or CPIC, on 17 January.
Capital flows in conservation finance: The impacts of the Global Biodiversity Framework
CPIC is an international coalition of companies and NGOs whose main objective is to scale up investments in conservation. This was a hybrid international meeting, with online participants and only three face-to-face hubs, hosted by WWF in Washington DC, South Pole in London, and FAPBM in Antananarivo. The meeting was opened from the Antananarivo hub by Frank Hawkins, Chairman of the CPIC Executive Committee.
In part 1, the meeting addressed the impacts of Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) on conservation finance. The GBF announces a new era of conservation finance as it encourages resource mobilisation by all actors, especially the private sector.
As a prelude to the meeting, Frank Hawkins briefed the Protected Areas actors of Madagascar on the CPIC and how Madagascar could benefit from the organisation.
Biodiversity credits to involve Madagascar private in conservation finance
As shaping the upcoming Biodiversity credits market is an in-progress work of CPIC, Madagascar can benefit from the results. Biodiversity credits were addressed explicitly during a breakout session. Like carbon credits, biodiversity credits reward companies that support biodiversity conservation or restoration through biodiversity units. Biodiversity credits differ from biodiversity offsets, which are payments made by a business to compensate for its damaging impacts on location-specific ecosystems.
There is a broad agreement that more than one metric on biodiversity is needed, given its complex nature. Still, two areas can broadly be seen where current developments focus: habitat or ecosystem-based and species-based.
A clear outcome from this discussion is that COP15 furthers a biodiversity credits market to ensure that any biodiversity credits are additional through collaboration and coalitions like CPIC, or that there is an overall gain from the purchase of credits. It is crucial to building trust and credibility in the market to improve metrics, which is another topic of the breakout sessions. Pivotal and Nature Metrics, two relatively new companies that have attracted significant investment, offered insights into the exciting opportunities for digitizing metrics and using new technologies like EDNA for tracking biodiversity gain.
Could this be implemented in Madagascar to mobilize the private sector to finance protected areas? Learn more about the options for private sector contribution through FAPBM.
