Goal 15
Life on land
The Inter-agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal indicators selected Official development assistance and public expenditure on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems
as the indicator for this target. The logic of this choice is that biodiversity-related development finance captures the extent to which biodiversity considerations have been mainstreamed and integrated into international development cooperation.
Total bilateral biodiversity related ODAThe flows to countries and territories on the DAC list of Official Development Assistance recipients and to multilateral institutions.
more averaged US$6.4 billion over the years 2012-2014, accounting for almost 5 per cent of total bilateral ODA. Of this, 39 per cent, or an average of just over US$2.5 billion, was targeted at biodiversity as the principle objective15.6. The majority of biodiversity-related ODA, almost US$4 billion, targeted biodiversity as a significant but secondary objective. The increase in biodiversity-related ODA over the past decade is indicated in figure 15.4, both in absolute and relative terms.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) notes that biodiversity-related ODA may often target multiple objectives simultaneously, such as climate change and gender equality. In other words, Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members will often deliberately exploit the co-benefits or strive for policy coherence between biodiversity and other objectives (OECD DAC Statistics, 2016).
The bulk (77 per cent) of biodiversity-related ODA since 2007 has typically targeted general environment protection; agriculture, forestry, fishing and rural development; and water supply and sanitation programmes. Asia has received the highest share of bilateral biodiversity-related ODA since 2007 (30 per cent), followed closely by Africa (29 per cent).
The vast majority (61 per cent) of biodiversity-related ODA flowing to Asia has targeted biodiversity as a prime or principal objective, whereas for Africa the opposite is true, with the bulk (70 per cent) targeting biodiversity as a secondary objective.