What the OECD set out to count
The OECD report is an attempt to answer a basic question with uncomfortable implications: how much money is the world really spending on biodiversity, and what is it spending to destroy it?
Published in April 2020, “A Comprehensive Overview of Global Biodiversity Finance” compiles data from domestic public budgets, development finance, private spending, and market‑based mechanisms. It aims to give governments a baseline for the post‑2020 biodiversity framework and to highlight gaps in both funding and data.
“Global biodiversity finance is estimated at USD 78–91 billion per year… governments spend approximately USD 500 billion per year in support that is potentially harmful to biodiversity.”
The headline numbers
The report estimates total biodiversity finance at USD 78–91 billion per year (average 2015–2017), equivalent to about 0.1% of global GDP. That total comes from:
- Around USD 67.8 billion in domestic public expenditure on biodiversity each year by 81 countries.
- USD 3.9–9.3 billion in international public finance (bilateral and multilateral ODA and related flows), with a mid‑range estimate of USD 6.1 billion.
- USD 6.6–13.6 billion in private spending, including biodiversity offsets, sustainable commodity certification, NGO revenues, philanthropic grants, payments for ecosystem services, and certain carbon and water markets.
Against that, the report estimates roughly USD 500 billion per year in government support that is potentially harmful to biodiversity, including fossil fuel subsidies and environmentally damaging agricultural support. The biodiversity‑positive flows are outgunned five‑ or six‑to‑one by the subsidies that drive loss.
On the report’s own numbers, governments still spend several times more on incentives that damage biodiversity than on efforts to conserve it.
Where the money comes from and how it moves
Most biodiversity finance in the report is domestic public spending, captured through national budget lines, IUCN‑aligned classifications, and the CBD’s financial reporting framework. Only a fraction is clearly tagged as biodiversity in international flows, and private spending is described as a conservative lower bound because data are scattered and methodologies differ.
The international public component includes bilateral aid for protected areas and species programs, multilateral funds like the Global Environment Facility, and biodiversity‑related development bank finance. Private finance is stitched together.
- Biodiversity offset schemes were estimated to be worth USD 2.6–7.3 billion in 2016.
- Sustainable commodity certification in forestry and agriculture, USD 2.3–2.8 billion.
- Revenue of major conservation NGOs attributable to private donors and firms, USD 1.2–2.3 billion.
- Philanthropic foundations’ biodiversity grants, USD 222–380 million.
- Mobilized private co‑finance in GEF projects and in DAC‑tracked development interventions.
The report treats biodiversity finance as a patchwork of grants, subsidies, offsets, and market instruments, with no single system yet able to track them without double counting.
Harmful finance and agriculture’s role
A substantial section is devoted to flows that harm biodiversity. The report highlights:
- Fossil fuel support across 76 mainly OECD and G20 economies: USD 340 billion in 2017, reinforcing one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss via climate change.
- Agricultural producer support in OECD countries: USD 228 billion in 2017, about USD 116 billion of which is categorized as “potentially most environmentally harmful” because it is tied to output and unconstrained input use.
- Fisheries subsidies that lower fuel and vessel costs encourage overcapacity and illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing.
The report argues that scaling back harmful support is as important as increasing conservation finance, because reducing direct pressures shrinks future funding needs. It also notes that the true volume of harmful private flows is likely “many times larger” than the quantified public subsidies.
The money propping up overfishing, fossil fuels, and intensive farming is not just missing from conservation budgets; it is actively writing the script of biodiversity loss.
Data gaps and accounting politics
The final part of the report is less about money than about counting. It highlights inconsistent definitions of “biodiversity finance,” patchy reporting, and overlapping classifications that risk double‑counting. To address this, the OECD recommends:
- Adapting the CBD financial reporting framework to require more granular data and clearer methods.
- Developing harmonized approaches for tracking public biodiversity spending using systems like COFOG, CEPA, and CReMA.
- Creating a common framework for private biodiversity finance, drawing on climate‑finance tracking experience.
- Systematically identifying and monitoring subsidies harmful to biodiversity, alongside efforts to evaluate which positive flows are actually effective.
The report points to experiments like UNDP’s BIOFIN country expenditure reviews and the EU’s biodiversity‑tagging of its budget as early attempts at this kind of accounting.
The document suggests that until harmful subsidies and positive spending are seen in the same ledger, talk of “closing the biodiversity finance gap” will remain largely rhetorical.
