Biodiversity mainstreaming

^{(5) Management commitments under 2014-2022 rural development programmes}

What do we do?

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 15^th 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.

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 contributing almost EUR 113 billion, or 5.8% of the total budget, to biodiversity mainstreaming objectives. While the ambition of allocating 7.5% of the EU budget to biodiversity in 2024 was achieved, the 10% targets for 2026 and 2027 are projected to fall below the initial ambitions. 

It is worth noting that the common agricultural policy methodology for the 2023-2027 period has a higher level of granularity and ambition compared to the methodology used in 2014-2022, allowing for more precise and conservative estimates compared to the past. As from the 2024 draft budget, the contribution of the common agricultural policy to biodiversity is estimated by the Commission through the application of EU coefficients (100%, 40% and 0%) and weighting factors (100%, 70% and 50%) that aim to reflect the differentiated contribution of each type of intervention towards the biodiversity objectives. Furthermore, given the design of the common agricultural policy and the cohesion policy – and the financial programming of the two programmes – it is not possible to assign resources to specific years, as projects have a multiannual nature that cannot be attributed to a single year. Contribution of the recently created Ukraine Facility and Western Balkan Facility towards biodiversity objectives is currently missing and will be updated once the data are available in the upcoming years. 

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.