MILAN, Italy, May 4. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is working with other banks to close financing gap in biodiversity sector, Yoko Watanabe, Director for Environment at the Asian Development Bank, said during the seminar on Natural Financing for Biodiversity Hotspots held as part of the 58th ADB Annual Meeting in Milan, Italy, Trend reports.
“ADB has been working on this space, but there are sort of three approaches that we are taking. One is really working on major positive investment.
We are working on mainstreaming in sectors like agriculture, energy and transport and others. And the third point I will highlight is the safeguard. We are preventing, avoiding, and also maintaining that these investments that we make is having net zero impact to biodiversity. So in terms of safeguard is concerned, we have a safeguard policy and we have now a new environment and social framework that will really strengthen our work in terms of investments on the ground, particularly infrastructure and others to really recognize ecosystem integrity and connectivity and all that,” she said.
Watanabe noted that ADB is working on coastal management, wetland management, and other natural resource management that really have a positive impact on biodiversity and also for the economy growth.
“There is a job sort of creation prospect in Asia. If we did nature positive investment, it creates almost 200 million additional jobs every year. And this is a really opportunity for us to really see that this is not just a safeguard issue, but this is an investment. And for that regard, what we have done last year was this biodiversity and nature bond. This is the first of its kind among the multilateral development bank.
And we issued $100 million worth of bond to protect nature by mobilizing private capital. And that part is the most important. We can't just do biodiversity conservation with public finance. And the private sector finance is really critical. And working with capital market and really coming up with more innovative financing like bonds and biodiversity credits, debt for nature swap, and other issues that our team is working on,” she said.
Watanabe went on to add that ADB is working on origination of these nature positive and nature mainstreaming projects on the ground.
“We are working on innovative financing with different banks as well as different partners from Europe and others to really come up with innovative sort of financial solutions towards this big financial gap that we see on biodiversity and nature,” she concluded.