2015 is a crucial year for biodiversity because this year’s decisions will have a huge impact for biodiversity conservation and funding in the next fifteen years. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets complement the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on conserving and sustainably using biodiversity – known as Aichi Targets. Mobilizing financial resources is considered crucial to address both the conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems. Biodiversity finance faces two challenges: On the one hand, reaching the agreed objectives requires to substantially upscale public, private, domestic and international financial resources to meet the needs. Although 51-53 billion US-dollars are available per year to foster biodiversity conservation, the level of finance needed is estimated to be six to eight times higher. While the G7 countries, according to the G7 progress report on biodiversity, have acknowledged biodiversity’s role for sustainable development and have provided solid financial support to biodiversity conservation efforts, the loss of biodiversity could not be stopped. On the other hand, the capacity in developing countries to effectively use biodiversity funds for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use needs to be enhanced. The capacity is often insufficient to deal with the available funds today and presents a real obstacle to future increases in biodiversity funding. Furthermore, mainstreaming of biodiversity considerations into policies, strategies and practices of key public and private actors is essential to ensure its conservation.

The aim of the workshop was to discuss finance as a necessary and sufficient condition for conserving and sustainably using biodiversity. The point of departure was be the status quo of biodiversity targets and finance in the year 2015. The workshop will then deal with the question what is needed in financial terms to reach the agreed biodiversity goals and targets. Secondly, it will assess what is already being done at the international, national and local level and what are the available resources and the applied instruments. Lastly, it will discuss the barriers that prevent effective implementation, including the capacity lack and the question of aid effectiveness.