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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/uk-among-rich-countries-not-paying-fair-share-to-restore-nature-report-aoe>
"The UK, Canada, New Zealand, Italy and Spain are among the rich countries
contributing less than half their fair share of nature finance to poor
countries, a new report has found.
Developed nations have agreed to collectively contribute a minimum of $20bn
annually for nature restoration in low and middle-income countries by 2025.
This money is in addition to the $100bn agreed for climate finance.
So far, Norway and Sweden are the only two countries providing a fair amount,
while the “overwhelming majority of developed countries do not provide even
half of their fair share,” according to the report by the Overseas Development
Institute (ODI) thinktank. The UK was providing about 24% of its commitment,
while countries in southern and eastern Europe came at the bottom of the
ranking, with Greece providing only about 10% of what it should, and Poland 5%.
Globally, nations are falling $11.6bn (£9.1bn) short on these financial
commitments and must “dramatically scale up”, according to researchers who
looked at each country’s progress based on 2021 data, which was the most recent
to be released by governments. Some additional pledges have been made in the
past three years but they do not “substantially move the needle”, experts say.
Rich countries are most responsible for the loss of nature globally over the
past 60 years. The payments to poorer countries – which typically have the
greatest reserves of biodiversity left and smaller ecological footprints – are
designed to compensate for this overconsumption of the planet’s natural
resources.
The report is the first analysis of how individual donor countries are
delivering on their financial commitments made in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal
Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at Cop15, where nature targets for the next
decade were agreed upon.
Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50
years, and for decades nations have failed to meet UN targets to stop this
decline.
“We hope this report serves as a wake-up call for high-income countries to
fulfil their obligations,” said Laetitia Pettinotti, the lead author and a
research fellow at ODI.
“Failing to reach the target undermines the UN convention on biological
diversity and damages trust. But far more importantly, this failure represents
a genuine threat to our shared prosperity, livelihoods, economies and health,”
she said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
