Biodiversity Capital Research Collective
Amidst all the debate about how to raise money for KMGBF implementation, some crucial flows of finance risk being left off the table. According to research by Tax Justice Network, countries are losing $480 billion USD per year due to global tax abuse. IMF research finds another $44 billion USD is being left on the table by under-taxing extractive sectors – the exact sectors who should be contributing their fair share to KMGBF
implementation.
Unprecedented global debt distress is also draining government budgets and driving extractive land use; in 2023 “3.3 billion people [were] living in countries that spend more on interest payments than on education or health.” This massive outflow of capital is the outcome of high interest rates on debt issued in
foreign currencies. Consider, for example, that developing countries are borrowing at rates up to 12 times more expensive than those in developed countries and this debt is issued in mostly US dollars. Because debt is issued in foreign currency, the value of these debts can increase without governments lifting a finger:
recent US interest rate hikes, for example, resulted in an increase of African countries debt by 10% of GDP from January 2022 to March 2023. In the constant, uphill battle to earn foreign currency to repay these debts, governments are incentivized, and sometimes mandated, to hasten their production of extractive exports.
These conditions not only deepen countries’ reliance on extractive exports, but limit their ability to direct public finance towards social and environmental priorities. As such, the resource mobilization conversation ought to pivot from a focus on private finance to a focus on public finance, and the necessity of tax justice and debt relief to relieve the pressures on biodiversity-rich countries to expand commodity production, and increase public revenues to meet KMGBF targets.
These unequal conditions of access to debt financing needs to be championed as a broader constraining condition on KMGBF implementation. So far, debt shows up mostly in relation to debt-for-nature swaps, which, while potentially an important stop-gap mea-sure, will ultimately not be able to provide substantial debt reduction, nor create sufficient fiscal space for Global South countries to tackle biodiversity, climate and other SDG objectives.
Research shows that public finance will necessarily form the foundation of financing CBD targets (1, 2 3, 4). Recent increases in overall financial flows have come mostly in the form of loans, rather than grants, and, overall, private flows of biodiversity finance remain marginal in size with unproven (if not deleterious)
impact. This reality points to the importance of increasing public finance for biodiversity action and lessening fiscal pressures that increase countries’ dependence on activities that harm biodiversity. These flows of public finance should recognize the ecological debts that the Global North has accrued, advance Rio principles of common but differentiated responsibility, and obligations under Article 20 of the CBD.
Key points on finance to be championed at COP16:
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Increased public finance as a necessity for KMGBF implementation
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Private finance as insufficient for KMGBF implementation
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Debt restructuring and cancellation beyond debt-for-nature swaps
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Tax justice to open up new sources of public finance for KMGBF
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A loss and damage approach accounting for compounding ecological debts