| Overview : Botswana has been party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 1995. As a signatory to the convention, Botswana supports the CBD’s premise that biological diversity strengthens ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services essential for human well-being, and that its contribution to livelihoods gives it a key role in poverty reduction. The country formulated its first National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) in 2004 (revised in 2007) as a guiding tool for conservation and management of biodiversity and ecosystems. The 2007 NBSAP is currently being reviewed (2014) to integrate global guidance contained in the CBD’s Strategic Plan (2011-2020) and the Aichi Targets agreed at the 2010 Nagoya Conference of Parties. As the overarching management tool at the national level, there is need to ensure that the NBSAP is effectively implemented. Given the pressing development priorities that Botswana faces, this requires innovative sources of funding for biodiversity management that can be sustained over the long term. To effectively utilize existing sources of finance, and identify new innovative financing mechanisms, there is need to conduct detailed national level finance assessments to provide more robust information on the biodiversity finance gap. The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) is designed to address the biodiversity finance challenge by building a sound business case for increased investments in the conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems and biodiversity.
Along with 19 other countries around the world, Botswana is participating in the BIOFIN initiative to develop and pilot a methodology for quantifying the biodiversity finance gap at the national level and provide a framework for undertaking “bottom-up” analyses and resource mobilisation strategies. The framework will support governments and other stakeholders to achieve the following goals:
• To analyze the impacts of current policies, institutions and expenditure, and to identify opportunities to mainstream biodiversity considerations into economic sectors and development planning, in order to reduce the pressures exerted by the drivers of biodiversity loss and to achieve cost-effectiveness;
• To undertake a comprehensive assessment of current funding and future needs to achieve the Aichi Targets, following the questions: (a) What are the cost coefficients of basic biodiversity management functions? What are opportunities and barriers to improve cost-effectiveness? (b) How much would it cost to remove the above barriers? (c) What financing is hence required to meet national targets set in terms of the global biodiversity targets adopted under the new CBD Strategic Plan for the period 2011-2020?
• To roll out appropriate national-level biodiversity financing strategies and mechanisms through which countries can identify, access, combine and sequence multiple sources of environmental and development finance for meeting their biodiversity needs and achieving the CBD’s Aichi Targets.
In light of the above, UNDP and other partners in the Initiative are seeking the services of a Private Finance/Business expert to undertake an analysis of finance flows for biodiversity-related expenditures by examining the level of mining and the tourism sector expenditures on biodiversity-related issues, and in collaboration with other members of the national and international team, support the development of a resource mobilization strategy (financial strategy) to cover the cost of implementing the NBSAP. |
