The Nigerian authorities says it’s working with related stakeholders by means of initiatives such because the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) and the National Net-Zero Nature-Positive Implementation Plan to join biodiversity priorities with national planning, financing wants and funding alternatives.
Nigeria’s point of interest to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Sikeade Egbuwalo, disclosed this in the course of the nation’s intervention on the Technical-Level Dialogue between Finance and Environment Ministries on the ongoing CBD COP17 negotiations in Armenia.
The dialogue was convened as a part of efforts to implement CBD Decision 16/34 on useful resource mobilisation.
“We recognise the importance of synergies between biodiversity and climate change. However, synergy must not translate into hierarchy,” Mrs Egbuwalo instructed delegates.
She stated built-in approaches ought to strengthen each agendas with out subordinating biodiversity financing to local weather finance.
Nigeria’s BIOFIN programme was launched in late 2025 in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to assist shut the nation’s biodiversity financing hole and assist nature conservation and sustainable ecosystem administration.
Nigeria, Africa’s priorities
Since negotiations started final week, biodiversity financing has remained one of the contentious points, notably for growing international locations in search of substantial monetary assist to implement the worldwide biodiversity framework.
Discussions have centered on mobilising extra private and non-private funding, enhancing entry to present assets and redirecting environmentally dangerous subsidies in the direction of actions that assist nature conservation.
A significant subject is the implementation of the Cali Fund, established following COP16 to assist benefit-sharing from the business use of digital sequence data (DSI) on genetic assets.
The mechanism seeks to be certain that firms benefiting from the business use of such data contribute to biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use.
For African international locations, the talk is intently linked to fairness, useful resource possession and the continent’s capability to finance conservation.
African negotiators argue that the continent’s wealthy organic assets assist business actions worldwide, whereas the advantages generated from their use don’t adequately attain the international locations and communities from which these assets originate.
They are pushing for benefit-sharing preparations that ship tangible monetary assets for biodiversity safety, neighborhood improvement and the implementation of national conservation plans.
Negotiators are additionally discussing methods to mobilise non-public funding and redirect environmentally dangerous subsidies. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework requires at the very least $500 billion yearly in dangerous incentives to be eradicated or redirected by 2030.
Nigeria’s intervention and place
During its intervention, Nigeria strongly advocated for facilitating dialogue between Finance and Environment Ministries beneath paragraph 26(a) of Decision 16/34, citing a elementary hole in how biodiversity is positioned inside national and worldwide monetary decision-making.
“Our central concern is that nature and biodiversity must be accorded the same level of political, institutional and financial priority as climate change,” Mrs Egbuwalo stated.
She argued that local weather change was not a higher or extra necessary disaster than biodiversity loss, stressing that each had been interconnected, equally pressing and elementary to sustainable improvement.
According to her, local weather change has obtained important consideration from finance ministries, national funds authorities, improvement banks and worldwide monetary establishments through the years, whereas biodiversity has not loved the identical degree of recognition and monetary prioritisation.
“Nature is not a subset of climate change. Biodiversity has its own intrinsic, ecological and economic value. We should not have to justify investments in biodiversity solely on the basis of their contribution to climate mitigation or adaptation,” she stated.
Mrs Egbuwalo stated Nigeria pushed for the dialogue beneath Decision 16/34 as a result of biodiversity wanted to transfer past the unique duty of Environment Ministries and develop into a core consideration in fiscal insurance policies, national budgets, public funding selections and financial improvement planning.
READ ALSO: CBD COP17: Why African countries struggle to mobilise biodiversity funding – AfDB official
She famous that Finance Ministries play a central function in useful resource allocation, fiscal incentives, taxation and funding insurance policies.
Without their energetic engagement, she stated, the bold commitments beneath the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework would stay troublesome to implement.
Nigeria additionally maintained that useful resource mobilisation was not solely about producing new financing but additionally about redirecting present monetary flows, reforming incentives dangerous to biodiversity and making certain that national expenditure supported, slightly than undermined, nature.
The nation stated it anticipated the technical dialogue to produce sensible suggestions on institutional collaboration, biodiversity-responsive budgeting, devoted financing devices and stronger engagement by Finance Ministries in implementing National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).
Mrs Egbuwalo stated Nigeria wished a elementary shift in how governments prioritised local weather and biodiversity financing.
“We cannot continue to treat climate change as an economic priority while biodiversity remains largely an environmental responsibility,” she stated.
She added that nature’s safety deserved equally sturdy monetary and institutional commitments, expressing hope that the dialogue would transfer governments from recognising the significance of biodiversity to taking concrete motion.
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