Political Vision: The 10 Point Plan for Financing Biodiversity
Point 7 – Multilateral Development Banks
France: The Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact
What
In June 2023, France hosted the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, bringing together over 100 countries, including 40 heads of state and government, and representatives from international organizations and financial institutions, civil society, academia, and the private sector to consider reforms to the global financial system, including how to scale up finance from the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) for biodiversity.
Goal
The overall aim of the Summit was to lay the foundations for a renewed international financial system to address the joint challenges of climate, nature and development through increased global cooperation. As part of this overarching goal, the Summit sought to urge the MDBs to align their portfolios with the Global Biodiversity Framework and introduce financing mechanisms for biodiversity.
Benefits
The Chair’s Summary and associated Vision Statement on Multilateral Development Banks called on MDBs to continue to play a key role in promoting just transitions and fostering sustainable development, and to implement a set of principles to make the most of resources in the international financial system. The Summit called on the MDBs to align their portfolios with the Global Biodiversity Framework. MDBs will need to develop their strategies, methodologies and finance towards biodiversity to reach the ambitious targets set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
The Summit highlighted that while tackling large challenges in the global financial system in the future, no country should choose between reducing poverty and preserving the planet.
The Summit also produced a roadmap to build on key milestones of the international agenda to follow up on the discussions on a New Global Financing Pact.
Next steps and lessons learned
As host of the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, France will organize a stocktake of progress achieved on the road map produced by the Summit. This should be updated by the UN Summit for the Future in 2024, with a view to assessing the Sustainable Development Goals and the objectives of the Paris and the Montreal-Kunming agreements on climate and biodiversity. The lessons learned from this summit were:
Increase ambition in Climate Finance: Expectation for MDBs to fully align with the Paris Agreement as soon as possible and increase their ambition in climate finance.
Integration of Nature into MDB Activities: Call for better integration of nature into MDB activities to achieve SDGs, Paris Agreement, and the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Focus on vulnerability: Call for targetting concessional finance for the most vulnerable countries. The ratification of the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) that allocates up to 39% of its resources to most vulnerable countries is a positive step in that objective.
Support for Sustainable Development and Green Transition: Emphasis on capacity building, policy dialogue, reforms, and analytics, with coordination and cooperation among MDBs.
Synergies with other Points of the 10 Point Plan
1 – International Finance Flows
8 – Access to Funds
Relevant links and resources
Sommet pour un nouveau pacte financier mondial - 22 et 23 juin 2023 - Paris - Palais Brongniart
Chairs Summary – Synthesis of the Chair (nouveaupactefinancier.org)
