Chapter 08 · Finance, data & evidenceSustainable Finance & Investment
Conservation finance
Definition
Conservation finance refers to the mechanisms and structures through which money is raised, allocated and managed to deliver conservation outcomes. The Conservation Finance Alliance defines it as encompassing mechanisms and strategies that generate, manage and deploy financial resources for nature conservation, spanning philanthropy, public budgets, debt instruments, payments for ecosystem services, carbon and biodiversity credits, and return-seeking investment.
References
definition
practice description (via CPIC)
Overview
What it means
Moving conservation from reliance on donations toward structured, sometimes revenue-generating, financing models.
How it is used
Practitioners such as the CFA and UNDP BIOFIN use the term to describe blended-finance funds, conservation trust funds, green bonds and other instruments that close the biodiversity funding gap.
Why it matters
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework makes resource mobilisation a central pillar; conservation finance is the vocabulary of how that funding is actually structured.