Target 18

Reduce Harmful Incentives by at Least $500 Billion per Year, and Scale Up Positive Incentives for Biodiversity

Identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity, in a proportionate, just, fair, effective and equitable way, while substantially and progressively reducing them by at least 500 billion United States dollars per year by 2030, starting with the most harmful incentives, and scale up positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

GBF_Target_18

Identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity, in a proportionate, just, fair, effective and equitable way, while substantially and progressively reducing them by at least 500 billion United States dollars per year by 2030, starting with the most harmful incentives, and scale up positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

Target 18
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Rationale

GSAP

Action by national governments, financial institutions, and multilateral development banks is needed to remove or reduce the most harmful incentives and reform them in ways that are neutral or positive to species conservation.

Primary tools and resources

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WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, was adopted at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) on 17 June 2022. It prohibits harmful fisheries subsidies, which are a key factor in the widespread depletion of the world’s fish stocks.

Members also agreed at MC12 to continue negotiations on outstanding issues with a view to making recommendations by MC13 for additional provisions to further enhance the disciplines of the Agreement.

Tracking Economic Instruments and Finance for Biodiversity

The OECD Environmental Policy Committee, through its unique database of Policy Instruments for the Environment (PINE), collects quantitative and qualitative information on policy instruments from more than 120 countries worldwide. This brochure presents statistics on the biodiversity-relevant economic instruments and the finance they mobilise, based on
currently available data. The brochure also includes information on payments for ecosystem services (PES) and on biodiversity offsets, two other types of economic instruments that provide incentives for biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use.

BIOFIN The Nature of Subsidies: A step-by-step guide to repurpose subsidies harmful to biodiversity and improve their impacts on people and nature

The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed this guide to assist countries in assessing to what extent government subsidies are having harmful impacts on biodiversity, and to create action plans to repurpose them to become more nature-positive and enhance positive impacts for both people and nature. The BIOFIN Catalogue of Financing Solutions summarizes over 150 possible financing mechanisms to help countries understand which financing mechanisms are already used around the world. Countries can use this Catalogue to determine priorities for their national biodiversity finance plan.

How to use

The step-by-step guide can be downloaded at:

https://www.biofin.org/knowledge-product/nature-subsidies-step-step-guide-repurpose-subsidies-harmful-biodiversity-and

Further information on BIOFIN and the Catalogue of Financing Solutions are available at:

https://www.biofin.org/

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