Remarks by Mathias Cormann,

Secretary-General, OECD

Excellencies, colleagues,

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today at the Biodiversity PreCOP meeting towards an ambitious and effective Post-2020 Global framework.

Accelerating biodiversity loss, the emergence of new infectious diseases and the many negative impacts of climate change, including on species and ecosystems all demonstrate how we have to transform our relationship with nature.

The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will play a critically important role in guiding global action to stop and prevent biodiversity loss and to reverse many aspects of this trend.

We see four critical elements that the new Framework needs to address to be effective:

First, to the greatest extent possible biodiversity targets need to be quantitative. This will enable us to monitor progress effectively and in a more consistent and objectively comparable way across countries.

Second, we welcome the use of headline indicators for the state of biodiversity and our actions to counter these. Such indicators, against which all Parties need to report, will enable us to track cumulative national efforts against global targets and improve transparency and accountability.

Third, we need to scale up the use of positive incentives and make them more ambitious. These instruments - such as biodiversity-relevant taxes, fees and charges, environmentally-motivated subsidies - are key to mainstreaming biodiversity across all sectors and provide continuous incentives for sustainable production and consumption.

Fourth, given how critical these incentives are in achieving the objectives of the post-2020 Framework, positive incentives should be included in the headline indicators. The OECD has been tracking data on positive incentives for over 50 years with more than 120 countries contributing data in a consistent and comparable way. We also track the finance these instruments mobilise. For example, our 2021 update of Tracking Economic Instruments and Finance for Biodiversity, which will be released this week, shows that biodiversity-relevant taxes in 120 countries mobilise about USD 9 billion a year in revenue; Payments for ecosystem services mobilise more than USD 10 billion a year in just 10 countries alone.

Our 2019 report on A Comprehensive Overview of Global Biodiversity Finance also estimated that total finance for biodiversity protection, which covers both public and private finance, was approximately USD 78 to 91 billion a year. However, incentives harmful to biodiversity, such as fossil-fuel subsidies and government support to agriculture that is potentially environmentally harmful, amounted to USD 500 billion a year.

In addition to scaling up biodiversity finance, it is equally important to accelerate the reform of subsidies harmful to biodiversity.

The OECD will support and monitor the implementation of the post-2020 Framework by continuing to report data on government support for agriculture, fisheries, and fossil fuels, track positive incentives on biodiversity and the finance they mobilise, as well as track international development flows for biodiversity.

Beyond providing data, the OECD will continue producing biodiversity policy analysis and recommendations to a range of stakeholders such as the recent report prepared for the G7 on Biodiversity, Natural Capital and the Economy, which provides policy guidance for Finance, Economic and Environment Ministers.

Before the end of this year, we will release Guidance to identify and assess subsidies harmful to biodiversity.

By next year, we will release best practices on Green budgeting and biodiversity and on Mainstreaming biodiversity in infrastructure.

Excellencies,

We look forward to strengthening our collaborations in relevant international fora, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the G7, and the G20 to implement the transformative changes we need to achieve our biodiversity objectives.

Thank you.