Achieving Financial Sustainability in Biodiversity Conservation Programmes

It is widely appreciated that insufficient investment is being made in conserving biodiversity, and
that innovative approaches are required for generating the additional financial support required for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The need for additional resources arises from the imbalance between a country's need for capacity building and provision of basic infrastructure for conserving biodiversity on the one hand, and the ability of the country to mobilize resources on the other. Resources can be augmented through existing mechanisms such as the fiscal system, user charges, resource rent capture, and privatization, as well as through new mechanisms such as environmental taxes, betterment charges, and so forth. Even so, it appears that domestic resources in most developing countries will continue to be inadequate for financing the conservation of biodiversity due to the limited tax and capital base of many of these countries, their under-developed taxation systems and weak capital markets, and the need to divert resources to servicing foreign debt.