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New and Additional?


This leaflet summarises New and Additional? Financial Resources for Biodiversity Conservation in Developing Countries 1987-1994, a report by BirdLife International. For information on how to obtain the complete report, see end of this document.


New and additional resources
Under Agenda 21, developed countries have committed themselves to provide `new and additional' resources to help developing countries to achieve sustainable development. The Biodiversity Convention makes this a legal obligation as far as resources for biodiversity conservation are concerned. The Global Environment Facility is intended to be one of the main channels for these new funds. If funds are to be genuinely `new and additional', levels of both aid for biodiversity and total aid must be higher than before Agenda 21 and the Biodiversity Convention were agreed in 1992. Providing the funds to match the global environmental rhetoric is a key test of the industrial countries' real commitment to protect endangered species and habitats in the developing world. Are donor countries passing this test?

What will biodiversity conservation cost?
The World Conservation Monitoring Centre estimates that effective conservation in developing countries would cost around $20 billion per year. Current global spending on conservation (all countries) is put at $4.14 billion per year.1. Not all of the shortfall needs to come from the developed countries. But developing countries' own resources are severely limited.

Is current aid for biodiversity `new and additional'?
OECD, UN and GEF figures 2 provide no evidence that current levels of aid for biodiversity are `new and additional'. The graph below shows that after a peak in the Earth Summit year of 1992, annual aid levels for biodiversity have been lower than in the pre-GEF period of 1987-1990. Non-GEF biodiversity aid appears to have fallen substantially since 1992. The average annual commitment of aid for biodiversity in the period 1987-1994 was $445.75m. This falls massively short of what is needed for global conservation.


Note: The top figure above each column shows total commitments including GEF. The left-hand figure below is for `mainstream' bilateral and multilateral aid; the right-hand figure is for GEF. Total GEF Pilot Phase (1991-93) commitments for biodiversity are divided into three equal parts.


Although donors collectively are not satisfying the `new and additional' obligation, individual donors do appear to have maintained or increased their bilateral biodiversity aid as well as making `new' contributions to the GEF. These are Finland, Germany, Italy (at very low levels of bilateral aid), the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland.

There are big differences in aid for biodiversity among donors. The biggest overall donors - Japan and the USA - are among the biggest donors to conservation. However, Switzerland and Finland, each with a small bilateral aid programme, are in the top five biodiversity funders. The top five biodiversity donors in terms of percentage of their bilateral aid all have relatively small bilateral aid programmes overall: Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. The graph below shows total biodiversity aid for major donors.3.


The challenge of global conservation requires that donors fulfil their legal and political obligations to provide new and additional funds. As part of this, the GEF should be replenished at a level substantially higher in real terms than the $2 billion pledged for 1994-1997. Donors should also maintain and increase bilateral aid for biodiversity.

How easy is it to monitor whether donor countries are fulfilling their obligations?
Accurate and transparent reporting is essential for monitoring the effectiveness of the Convention and Agenda 21. Figures currently available at an international level on biodiversity aid are incomplete. The OECD system for recording how aid is used does not clearly identify all aspects of conservation expenditure. This makes it difficult to monitor donors' fulfilment of their obligations.

The Secretariats of the Biodiversity Convention and the OECD, donor countries, and multilateral institutions should work together to improve the way that aid reporting systems cover biodiversity expenditure. Donors should report clearly to the Conference of the Parties on how they have fulfilled their financial commitments.

Has other aid linked to conservation increased?
Aid for agriculture, forestry, integration of the environment into development, population programmes, strengthening the role of NGOs, and other activities linked to conservation fell in cash terms between 1987 and 1994, and has remained virtually unchanged as a percentage of total aid 4. Action is needed in all these areas if biodiversity is to be effectively conserved.

A greater proportion of aid should be focused in sectors and activities necessary for biodiversity conservation.

Trends in total aid: new and additional?
As the graph below shows, total aid was lower in real terms in 1994 than in 1988 5. The $2 billion available through the GEF between 1994 and 1997 - around $666m per year - will clearly not bridge the $4 billion per year gap between the peak aid level of over $60 billion in 1992 and the subsequent level of around $56 billion per year. Rather than providing finance that is genuinely new and additional in relation to total aid flows, the GEF appears to represent a diversion of some of those resources remaining within a general downward trend in aid.



Of the six countries that appear to have satisfied the `new and additional' obligation in relation to biodiversity aid by maintaining or increasing their bilateral biodiversity aid while also contributing to the GEF, five have reduced their total aid budgets since 1992 (Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland). Only one donor - Norway - appears to have provided `new and additional' finance since 1992 in relation to pre-1992 levels of both aid for biodiversity conservation and total aid expenditure.

Donors must increase total aid if they are to fulfil the obligation that increased funds for biodiversity conservation should be `new and additional' to total aid levels before 1992.

Is private investment filling the gap?
There is much debate about the fact that foreign private investment in developing countries has risen substantially and is continuing to do so. But this investment is concentrated in a small number of mainly middle-income countries, and in activities likely to exacerbate conservation problems rather than to help resolve them (mining, oil, logging, etc.) 6.

The sharp increase in private investment in a number of developing countries should not distract attention from the continuing need for official development assistance, and dedicated environmental funds, to address the pressing biodiversity conservation - and development - needs of the majority of developing countries. Greater efforts are needed to harness private funds for conservation, and to ensure that private investment does not cause environmental damage.

Debt: an extra pressure on conservation
Many of the countries with the richest biodiversity and the greatest need for conservation action have huge debt burdens. The graph below shows that the countries that are least able to meet their scheduled debt repayments tend to have very low levels of expenditure on protected areas - unless, like Kenya, they have a strong incentive to invest in conservation to promote tourism 7.


High debt service obligations seriously constrain all public spending and reduce the scope for conservation. Reducing debt burdens to free resources for domestic expenditure will help to make conservation more sustainable in the long term by reducing reliance on aid.

Further far-reaching action is needed to ease the debt burden on the most heavily indebted poor countries. The resulting resources should be targeted to biodiversity conservation, other environmental projects, and social expenditures.

Structural adjustment and biodiversity
There is much evidence that structural adjustment has exacerbated environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.8 Public spending on environmental institutions and government services such as agricultural extension has fallen in many countries. General government cutbacks have increased poverty, forcing larger numbers of people into direct dependence on natural resources for subsistence.

Expenditure needed for biodiversity conservation - and to enable developing countries to meet international legal obligations under the Biodiversity Convention - should be safeguarded in structural adjustment programmes.

Notes:

1. Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources. WCMC 1992; National Investments in Biodiversity Conservation. James A.N., Green M.J.B. and Pain J.R. in press WCMC.

2. OECD unpublished figures; UN Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development: Financial Flow Statistics: Adjustments for Monitoring the Financing of Agenda 21. Background Paper No. 7 for the Commission on Sustainable Development, Fourth Session, 18 April-3 May 1996. GEF: GEF Chairman's Report - July 1994; Annual Report 1995.

3. From OECD unpublished data.

4. UN, cf Note 3.

5. Development Cooperation 1995 Report. OECD.

6. See World Debt Tables 1996, World Bank.

7. Protected area expenditure from James et al., cf Note 1. Debt figures from World Debt Tables 1996.

8. Structural Adjustment, the Environment and Sustainable Development. Reed (ed.) 1996 Earthscan, London.


This leaflet, and the complete report New and Additional? Financial Resources for Biodiversity Conservation in Developing Countries 1987-1994, have been produced by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as part of BirdLife International's work on global biodiversity conservation. BirdLife International is a worldwide partnership of some 55 non-governmental organisations working for the conservation of birds and their habitats. The RSPB is the BirdLife Partner in the UK.

For further information, and to obtain a copy of New and Additional? Financial Resources for Biodiversity Conservation in Developing Countries 1987- 1994, please contact Rob Lake at:

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