Financing biodiversity

There is a huge gap between the actual financial flows to biodiversity conservation activities and the required financial resources. This funding gap has led to severe degradation of natural resources worldwide. Although global conventions and international organizations exert efforts to close this funding gap by urging donors and governments to double their spending, most countries are still struggling to fulfil their biodiversity financing needs. Additionally, most of the global conservations targets and goals failed to be fulfilled due to a lack of financial resources. Even though closing this funding gap is pivotal to stopping the loss of species, countries are not appropriately reporting on their expenditures and financial needs. Consequently, knowledge about the financial status of biodiversity conservation is still ambiguous. I argue that closing this funding gap is a complex process that requires thorough scrutinization of the biodiversity, demographic, economic, and institutional factors that affect the allocation of financial resources to biodiversity. Also, I argue that increase spending on biodiversity might be completely offset by any of these factors. Similarly, decrease spending might be balanced by any of these variables. Accordingly, the relationship between biodiversity spending and these factors should be investigated to ensure the optimal flow of the financial resources and to guarantee their efficient use. The results of this paper provide an empirical measure of all factors that negatively or positively affect the level of spending on natural resources. Moreover, this thesis provides an analysis of characteristics that makes some countries more or less suited to close this funding gap.