India suggests 10 percent hike in ODA for biodiversity : India

Hyderabad, Oct 11 - India Thursday suggested 10 percent increase in Official Development Assistance - for biodiversity conservation over the next 10 years to help the global community achieve biodiversity targets.

India, which is spending $2 billion every year on biodiversity conservation, feels global investment in biodiversity need to be enhanced.

A senior official of environment and forests ministry Thursday said ODA for biodiversity should increase to a decent level from the present $6 billion per annum.

Hem Pande, joint secretary in the ministry, said a 10 percent increase in ODA over a period of 10 years could give an additional $40 billion for biodiversity related activities.

He was addressing a side event organized by Global Environment Facility - during the ongoing 11th meeting of the Conference of Parties - to the Convention on Biodiversity - here.

COP10 at Nagoya, Japan in 2010 had set 20 biodiversity targets known as Aichi targets and had also adopted a 10-year strategic plan to achieve those targets.

Over 190 countries are parties to CBD adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. At the current meeting here, the countries are discussing resource mobilization to meet the targets.

The India-UK High Level Panel has estimated that the CBD required $150 billion to $450 billion per annum to meet Aichi targets.

Pande said developed countries at COP11 could announce the additional incremental financial resources to achieve strategic plan and instill confidence among international community.

Developing country parties could announce to match the additional incremental financial resources with equivalent domestic funding, he said.

With resource mobilization seen as the challenging task by the CBD secretariat in view of the economic slowdown in many countries, Pande said the COP11 could adopt a roadmap to complete negotiations and set resource mobilization targets in COP12 -.

India, which is chairing the COP for next two years, hopes that a common ground can be found during the negotiations.

Addressing a press conference Thursday, M.F. Farooqui, special secretary in the environment and forests ministry, said the countries were discussing various issues like establishing a robust baseline.

They are also discussing issues like what kind of reporting mechanism to be adopted and what elements should go into resource mobilization, he said while conceding that the talks on resource mobilization were challenging.