MOP6/COP11: Cost of biodiversity conservation per year is Rs 23,65,000 crore

By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad: The human greed has caused heavy damage to the
delicate biological diversity over the centuries. And what do you
think is the cost of rectifying this damage at least to some extent?

A whopping Rs 23,65,000 crore per year. The figure simply translates
to Rs 3378 crore per every human being on the earth, if the world
population is taken as 700 crore. This is the rough estimate of money
needed to achieve some of the target goals of the Convention on
Biological Diversity set two years ago. At the modest level, the world
needs to spend Rs 8,25,000 crore per year, which works out to Rs 1178
crore per every human being.

These target goals called Aichi targets were adopted at the last
Conference of Parties (CoP-10) held in Nagoya (Japan) in October 2010.
They include creation of awareness among people about the importance
of conservation of biological diversity and reduce the rate of loss to
forest cover by half by 2020. India played a key role on mobilization
of funds during the last two years.

The funds issue will dominate the discussion on the inaugural day of
the 19-day convention of biological diversity, which opens in the city
on Monday. CoP-11 is expected to come out with a road map for
operationalisation of the Strategic Plan and Aichi targets;
facilitation of early entry into force of Nagoya Protocol on Access
and Benefit Sharing; and determine targets for mobilizing resources
for implementing the Strategic Plan.

Presently, the international flows for biodiversity directly and
indirectly is about Rs 33,000 crore, which is about 4.7 per cent of
the global official development assistance of
Rs 6,98,500 crore. “To enable CoP-11 to agree on targets for resource
mobilization for implementation of the Strategic Plan, an assessment
of the requirement of funding to meet the Aichi targets at the global
level is necessary. Towards this, a number of activities have been
undertaken in the intersessional period,” says a concept note of the
Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.

India with Sweden, Ecuador and others co-sponsored a Dialogue seminar
on finance in Quito in March 2012, the outcomes of which resulted in
an improved understanding between the developed and developing
countries. Thereafter, India along with UK has sponsored a High Level
Panel for assessing the resources required globally to implement the
Strategic Plan.

An interim report of this Panel will be presented to CoP-11. The Panel
has estimated that the costs for implementing the Aichi targets is
between Rs 8,25,000 crore and Rs 23,65,000 crore annually, though
coordinated action on the targets is expected to substantially reduce
the total estimate.

According to the MoEF concept note, a team of five experts
commissioned by the CBD Secretariat has undertaken an assessment of
the amount of funds that are necessary to assist developing countries
in achieving Aichi targets, over the period 2014-2018. As per this
assessment, the total funding needs for developing countries for the
period 2014-2018 works out to be between Rs 4,07,000 crore and Rs
10,50,500 crore.

The outcome of these intersessional activities will be considered by
CoP-11, for facilitating a decision on some interim commitments on
resource mobilization, along with a road map that would include review
by CoP-12 when more information is expected to become available.