The preservation of biodiversity ensures the long-term stability of ecosystems and enables the sustainable preservation of natural resources for future generations. Tackling biodiversity loss and restoring ecosystems require significant investments, including to ensure a more resilient society and to combat the emergence of diseases linked to ecosystem degradation and the wildlife trade.
In 2020, the Commission adopted the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. The strategy is a comprehensive, ambitious and long-term plan to protect nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems. It contains initiatives and commitments to put Europe’s biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030. As a core part of the European Green Deal, it also supports a green recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy aims to establish a larger EU-wide network of protected areas covering 30% of the land and the seas; implement an EU nature-restoration plan, including by proposing binding nature-restoration targets in 2022; and enable the necessary transformative change through enhanced funding for biodiversity, including through the EU budget, and a strengthened EU-wide biodiversity governance framework.
In June 2022, the Commission adopted a proposal for a Nature Restoration Law aiming at restoring ecosystems, habitats and species across the EU’s land and sea areas. The proposal combines an overarching restoration objective for the long-term recovery of nature in the EU with binding restoration targets for specific habitats and species. These measures should cover at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030, and ultimately all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.
The 2030 strategy also paved the way for the EU’s contribution for the international biodiversity framework negotiations at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-15), which resulted in the Kunming–Montreal framework. The framework sets out an agreement to increase global biodiversity financing from about USD 100 billion per year to USD 200 billion per year from all sources: domestic and international, public and private. As part of the agreement, donors also subscribed to an international solidarity package, and committed to increasing international biodiversity financing from USD 10 billion to USD 20 billion by 2025, and USD 30 billion by 2030. The agreement calls for the alignment of financial flows and investments with biodiversity objectives, akin to Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement. Public and private financial flows should, as far as possible, become nature positive. With the commitment to identify subsidies at the national level by 2025, and then eliminate a total of at least USD 500 billion per year of biodiversity-harmful subsidies by 2030, the Kunming-Montreal framework will also help reset the rules of our economic and financial systems.
What do we do?
Halting and reversing the decline of biodiversity is a major objective of the EU, as reflected in the European Green Deal and in the Biodiversity Strategy. Protecting biodiversity is a global issue that requires transnational intervention and coordination.
In line with the European Green Deal, the Parliament, the Council and the Commission decided in the interinstitutional agreement that biodiversity should be mainstreamed in EU programmes to allocate at least 7.5% of annual spending to biodiversity objectives in 2024 and 10% in both 2026 and 2027, while considering the existing overlaps between climate and biodiversity goals.
This is in line with the statement in the biodiversity strategy for 2030 that biodiversity action requires at least EUR 20 billion per year stemming from ‘private and public funding at national and EU level’, of which the EU budget will be a key enabler. The strategy also states that, as nature restoration will make a major contribution to climate objectives, a significant proportion of the EU budget dedicated to climate action will be invested in biodiversity and nature-based solutions.
How much do we spend?
Biodiversity contribution in 2021 to 2027 (million EUR).
Source: European Commission.
For the 2021-2027 period, the EU budget – including NextGenerationEU – is dedicating EUR 115 billion, or 6.5% of the multiannual financial framework, to the fight against biodiversity loss.
Biodiversity methodology
For the 2021–2027 multiannual financial framework, the Commission developed a new methodology based on the EU coefficients described in the communication on the performance framework of the EU budget under the 2021-2022 multiannual financial framework. The approach assigns three different coefficients (0%, 40%, or 100%) based on a list of possible activities. More details are available in the Biodiversity Financing and Tracking Report. The methodology fully integrates the ‘do no (significant) harm’ principle into its design.
In 2023, the Commission has integrated the existing methodology with an effective and transparent methodology for the Common Agricultural Policy, taking into consideration the adopted strategic plans.
The amounts above are calculated based on commitment appropriations as following:
- For direct management, estimates are prepared by each service based on the most updated data available. For future estimates, work programmes and historical values are taken into consideration.
- For shared management, past and future figures are presented on the base of the programmes and CAP Strategic Plans agreed with the Member States, and updated according to the annual reports.
- For indirect management, the figures are based on the existing targets and agreements with the implementing partners, as well as their annual reports.
Some examples of what we have financed
Under the Horizon Europe programme, the EU mission ‘Restore our ocean and waters’ aims to restore the health of oceans and waters. Through research and innovation, citizen engagement and blue investments by 2030, marine and freshwater biodiversity will be restored. Also, by making the blue economy carbon neutral and circular, pollution will be eliminated.
EU Member States have outlined interventions in the strategic plans on the Common Agricultural Policy to promote more extensive farming practices, to reduce nutrient losses, fertilisers and pesticide use, to address antimicrobial resistance by reducing by 50% the sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and in aquaculture by 2030, to introduce landscape features such as hedges, trees, buffer strips, ditches, stonewalls on arable land, thereby protecting biodiversity and water resources.
The European Maritime and Fisheries Fund complemented other funding sources by supporting initiatives for the protection and restoration of marine and coastal biodiversity and ecosystems, including in inland waters. This included initiatives to achieve or maintain good environmental status and implement spatial protection measures under the EU marine strategy framework directive; manage, restore and monitor Natura 2000 areas; and protect species under the habitats and birds directives. With the help of funding from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, a stakeholder platform for dialogue to achieve sustainable fishing in biologically important areas was established in Sweden. In the context of this platform, fishers, officials and researchers have been trained to be able to better understand each other.
Under the Copernicus component of the EU space programme, the implementation of biodiversity-related policies is supported by land-monitoring services. It monitors land degradation, riparian and coastal ecosystems and even forest change. Such monitoring helps to support biodiversity and pollination, improve air quality, along with water quality and quantity, o reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance carbon sequestration, support climate change adaptation and regulate soil erosion and soil quality.
The Copernicus programme also tracks data on marine biological biodiversity. It is a powerful tool used by fisheries control administrations from across the EU to make maritime surveillance more effective, and helps to identify sources of oil pollution. Additionally, it reinforces monitoring activities and helps authorities to detect and track movement and activity in restricted fishing grounds.
The LIFE programme has supported nature and biodiversity as one of its core activities. LIFE projects contribute, among others, to protection and restoration of the Natura 2000 network. The Programme resulted in purchase of tens of thousands of hectares of Europe’s rarest and most endangered habitat types by the projects and led to restoration of degraded ecosystems. It has also saved numerous species from extinction, ensured the recovery of many local and endemic species and supported practical measures on the ground to prevent, control and eradicate invasive alien species. An example is the LIFE Calliope project, which aims to protect coastal dunes, sublittoral sandbanks and marine reefs along the central Adriatic coast of Italy and the north-western coast of Cyprus. This project also pays special attention to mitigating direct and indirect human threats (e.g. from conflicts with fishing and tourist activities).
Under the Development Cooperation Instrument (now the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe), the EU works with its neighbours in the Black Sea on a common maritime agenda for the Black Sea. In 2022, the ‘European Union for improving environmental monitoring in the Black Sea’ project worked on identifying requirements for improving laboratory capacity to monitor the marine environment in Georgia. Furthermore, between 2018 and 2021, some 543 000 km² of marine areas were protected with EU support under the Development Cooperation Instrument and the European Neighbourhood Instrument.
Thanks to the Pre-Accession instrument (IPA III), in North Macedonia the programme ‘Improving the management of protected areas’ promoted the sustainable use of natural resources, and allocated EUR 4 million EU funding for improving the management of the protected areas in an inclusive, professional and sustainable way. The programme was implemented in partnership with UNDP, the management authorities of protected areas, municipalities and local civil society organisations. It mobilized the local communities and the local resources in 24 locations in protected areas, some of which will be future NATURA 2000 site. In total, 241 755.42 ha of protected areas benefit today of improved management. The Programme involved the establishment of two wastewater treatment facilities in support of the Monument of Nature – Vevchani Springs and the National Park Pelister, and a competitive grant scheme, which resulted in the award of 25 grants for nature protection.