Actioning incentives for biodiversity and landscapes

About the consultation

The two-day expert consultation will deliberate on and identify areas for decision-makers, development practitioners, communities, and financial institutions to incentivise biodiversity-positive, climate-adaptive, and sustainable development actions, including the scaling of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) with an aim to mitigate the planetary crisis. The event will bring together the selected authors of case studies, experts with experience working with incentives for NbS, NGOs, private sector and government representatives and strategic partners.

This event is supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)-funded Himalayan Resilience Enabling Action Programme (HI-REAP) under the Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) programme.

Objectives

The two-day consultation will bring together global experts and scientists working on incentive measures, practitioners applying them, and decision-makers and financial institutions that create the enabling policy and financial environment and avenues for operationalising incentive measures. The specific objectives of the consultation are to:

• Share an overview of incentive measures across the Hindu Kush Himalaya
• Define key features of successful incentive measures, and those that have failed
• Identify and co-define necessary actions to apply and sustain incentive measures
• Explore opportunities to incentivise greener, inclusive and climate-resilient solutions

Intended outputs

• Actionable guidelines for decision-makers, development practitioners, and investors
• Features of successful incentive programmes – essential elements
• Identified opportunities for promoting incentive-based NbS
• Launch of the global campaign on mobilising incentives for greener, inclusive and climate-resilient actions

Background

Incentive measures for biodiversity conservation and sustainable landscape management are practices, policies and investment measures that provide monetary and non-monetary rewards to organisations or communities in recognition of their efforts in conserving and protecting biodiversity and sustaining ecosystem services. Incentive measures ensure that biodiversity, climate, and environmental considerations are reflected and mainstreamed into development interventions across sectors by governments and other stakeholders. There is an increasing recognition of the role the private sector can play in supporting incentives for sustainable landscapes.

Importance of incentive measures

Incentive measures are crucial to motivate local environmental stewards to continue their efforts in protecting and conserving the environment. For incentives to result in positive ecological impacts and socio-economic improvement, strong and meaningful participation of all stakeholders, particularly marginalised sections of society, is a prerequisite, such that efforts made at the local level are adequately compensated. By incentivising local environmental stewards, we can promote sustainable actions and practices, and adoption of nature-based solutions that yield long-term benefits for local communities and ecosystems.

Incentives in the global agenda

The Kunming Montreal Biodiversity Framework stresses promoting incentives that deepen actions for biodiversity conservation, such as an increase in the area of protected areas and other area-based conservation measures globally (Target 3); likewise, on eliminating or reforming incentives, including subsidies that harm biodiversity and scale up positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity (Target 18). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an important source of financing incentives. Under the Paris Agreement, one of the incentive instruments is results-based payment primarily through the carbon market to conserve and enhance sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification goes further with a call to recognise perverse incentives that encourage resource uses, which lead to the degradation of biological diversity and suggests removing or counteract such perverse incentives.