Commitments of $1.7 billion in favour of biodiversity by 2025 at COP28

Brazilian head of state Lula da Silva and the COP28 presidency have announced a commitment of $1.7 billion from the international community. The pledge, made at the World Summit on Climate Action on 3 December 2023, aims to halt the decline in the planet's biodiversity.

The Brazilian President’s wish to create a fund to preserve forests could become a reality over the next two years. Lula da Silva was joined by the COP28 presidency and several other world leaders who pledged 1.7 billion dollars at the Global Climate Action Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This “nature-climate action” aims to give concrete form to the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in December 2022. The fight against the loss of nature could save $104 billion in adaptation costs, and could account for up to 30% of the measures needed to mitigate CO₂ emissions between now and 2030, according to the COP28 Presidency.

At least three beneficiary countries in Africa

In detail, Ghana will receive $110 million from Canada, Singapore, the UAE and the United States of America, as well as from other private sector initiatives such as the LEAF coalition launched in 2021 with the aim of raising $1 billion to protect tropical forests. The funds will be used to finance the “Resilient Ghana” plant implemented as part of the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP) launched at COP27 in 2022.

Following on from this, French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed three funding packages, two of which are earmarked for Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Congo will receive $60 million and $50 million respectively, “to stimulate private financing for conservation and local development through verifiable carbon credit transactions”, explains the COP28 Presidency. Part of the funding ($100 million) announced by Paris will be allocated to the preservation of forests in Papua New Guinea.

The contribution of philanthropists

At the same time, the French Development Agency (AFD) is joining the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Opec Fund for International Development (OFID), Saudi Arabia and the Catalytic Green Finance Fund of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to create the Nature Finance Hub, an initiative aimed at mobilising $1 billion from development partners, with the intention of mobilising an additional $2 billion of private capital by 2030 in nature-based climate projects.

The contribution of philanthropists to the preservation of nature will also be decisive in reaching the target of 1.7 billion dollars over the next two years. A group of philanthropies, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Builders Vision and Oceankind, announced $250 million in new funding as part of the Ocean Resilience Climate Alliance (ORCA), targeting the protection of vulnerable marine areas, ocean-based mitigation efforts and research into climate impacts. The results of these various commitments will be assessed at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in 2025.