Effective conservation requires much larger and better-targeted investment

Marco Lambertini Different broad-scale conservation priorities overlap extensively Zoom In

Despite growing awareness of biodiversity’s value, global investment in conservation does not come close to what is needed. Because resources are still so scarce, immediate action must focus on priorities.

Public and political understanding of biodiversity issues is increasing

The last two decades have seen real, though still inadequate, advances in public and political understanding of biodiversity and its importance. The landmark conventions agreed in 1992 were reinforced at the 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg. Many nations have implemented national action. In developed countries, an ever more urbanised population is, paradoxically, more and more interested in nature – a trend supported by accessible materials across a wide range of media. Our data on the status of, and threats to, biodiversity are also getting better by the year.

We can easily afford global biodiversity conservation if we want to

Nevertheless, our global expenditure on conservation remains pitifully short of what is required. Biodiversity conservation is an excellent investment, but one that we are still not making. The world’s existing protected areas have an annual budgetary shortfall of around US$2.5 billion. Expanding the network to safeguard biodiversity adequately would cost another US$21.5 billion per year. Current global funding is only US$7 billion per year, of which less than US$1 billion is spent in the developing world, which holds most of the world’s biodiversity (see box 1). These amounts seem huge, but they are entirely manageable if we refocus our priorities. They represent a tiny proportion of the global economy and only a small fraction of the $1–2 trillion spent on ‘perverse’ subsidies that both damage the environment and encourage economic inefficiency. We can safeguard the bulk of global biodiversity for much less than is spent on soft drinks in the USA each year.

Priorities must be set to target scarce resources

Global investment in biodiversity conservation must be massively scaled up. Until that happens, it is essential to set priorities for where limited resources should be invested. Since BirdLife identified Endemic Bird Areas in 1992, many other conservation organisations have set large-scale geographical priorities. These overlap extensively, pointing a way forward to agreeing a common set of priorities (box 2). Biogeographic patterns mean that we can use birds, usually the best-known group, as an initial basis for planning, being confident that the great bulk of other biodiversity will be captured too, both at a large scale (box 3) and at site level.

Boxes: case studies and scientific analyses

Download SOWB pp.54–55 (PDF, 317 KB) containing the following:

1. We must invest more in biodiversity conservation, especially in developing countries
Relative annula conservation investment (scaled by the number of bird species in the country) is over 20 times lower in developing countries, which hold the bulk of global biodiversity, than in developed countries

2. Different broad-scale conservation priorities overlap extensively
Despite differences in approach EBAs, Terrestrial Biodiversity Hotspots and Global 200 Ecoregions overlap extensively, helping to focus attention on the world's most important places for biodiversity conservation

3. Birds are valuable indicators of global patterns in biodiversity
In sub-Saharan Africa, the great majority of vertebrate and plant diversity is captured by the network of 22 EBAs identified in this region