BIODIVERSITY FINANCE
BIOFIN Niger, a green approach to financing biodiversity
On Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 July 2024, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Niger, with financial support from…
Niger
Niger is a landlocked Sahelian country whose economy and rural livelihoods depend heavily on biodiversity and natural resources. Its diverse landscapes range from the Sahara Desert and Sahelian grasslands to wetlands and the Niger River ecosystem, supporting agriculture, livestock, fisheries and other nature-dependent livelihoods. The country is also home to globally important protected areas and wildlife, including the W-Arly-Pendjari Complex and the Aïr and Ténéré Natural Reserves.
Despite its ecological importance, Niger's biodiversity faces significant pressures from land and ecosystem degradation, desertification, climate change, unsustainable natural resource use, habitat loss and increasing pressure on water and land. These challenges directly affect communities whose livelihoods depend on healthy ecosystems and make investment in biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable land management increasingly important.
At the same time, limited and fragmented financing constrains the effective management of protected areas and the implementation of national biodiversity priorities. Addressing this financing challenge requires not only mobilizing additional resources, but also improving the effectiveness of existing expenditure and integrating biodiversity into public planning, budgeting and investment decisions.
Through UNDP BIOFIN, Niger is strengthening the evidence base for biodiversity finance and identifying opportunities to mobilize and better align public, private and innovative financial resources with national biodiversity priorities. This work supports the development of practical finance solutions that can help close financing gaps, strengthen ecosystem and protected-area management and ensure that Niger's natural capital continues to support livelihoods, resilience and sustainable development.
Finance solutions
Niger is a new BIOFIN country and in the preparatory phase.
Key results
The Policy and Institutional Review (PIR) in Niger highlighted the following results:
- These key priority institutions are committed to supporting the implementation of the BIOFIN approach, and to identifying, adopting and operationalizing financing mechanisms that will contribute to significantly improving the mobilization of financial resources for biodiversity and their effective and efficient management.
- There is a generalized loss of biological diversity in all its components, although in some agroecological zones, a return of wildlife and an increase in biomass have been observed.
- National strategies/policies and visions take very little account of biodiversity protection in their methodological approaches and compositions.
- The environmental situation remains characterized by "weak enforcement of legal and regulatory requirements, resulting in the absence of environmental assessments for artisanal mining, the absence of site rehabilitation plans and the subsequent appearance of orphan sites for artisanal mining and quarrying".
- Despite the strong dependence of the Niger economy on biodiversity, and nature's increasing contribution to GDP, financing biodiversity is not a priority objective for government authorities.
- Increasingly, local authorities, which have been given responsibility for sustainable environmental management, are contributing to the mobilization of biodiversity resources, without being able to fully invest in the implementation of these responsibilities.
- The landscape of biodiversity financing in Niger was analyzed through a presentation of the national and sub-national budgetary process, an assessment of biodiversity revenues, an inventory of more than 28 existing financing instruments, and the identification of subsidies with an impact on biodiversity.
- Five key priority institutions for biodiversity financing were identified, including the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Hydraulics, Sanitation and the Environment.
