LocationsEvaluating UNDP Support to Ecosystems and Biodiversity
Safeguarding the environment that supports us
Faced with continued biodiversity loss, new ideas and approaches are required to restore our natural environment. It is no longer enough to conserve what we have left – we must address the root causes – our dependence on natural resources and fossil fuels, and our propensity to over-consume, waste and pollute.
The Evaluation of UNDP Support to Ecosystem Management and Biodiversity Conservation was the first global independent evaluation with an in-depth focus on the organization’s work in this area. It assessed support UNDP provided between 2018 and 2024, while taking a longer-term view of lessons from UNDP’s approaches.
UNDP's ecosystems and biodiversity portfolio
UNDP’s ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation portfolio over the 2018–2023 period was delivered through 602 projects, with a total expenditure of over $1.5 billion across 134 countries. The largest proportion of funding for UNDP’s support for ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation since 2018 came from vertical trust funds (most from the Global Environment Facility) and other government and multilateral contributions, including from thematic trust funds, followed by national government contributions.
UNDP ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation expenditure by fund categories
Source: UNDP data as of November 2023
Global action for biodiversity: protecting habitats, strengthening governance
Biodiversity loss is driven by global forces that cross borders. UNDP played a key role in protecting vital ecosystems – safeguarding water resources and protecting the habitats of migratory birds and snow leopards. Through ambitious projects, UNDP fostered collaborative governance of biodiversity corridors and contributed to efforts against illegal wildlife trade.
UNDP also played a pivotal role in shaping National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, supporting their adoption and pioneering their localization at the sub-national level in Asia. It was also successful in supporting governments to expand legally protected areas. However, much of this expansion occurred in countries with a low percentage of protected area coverage, raising questions about the overall strength of legal protections .
Empowering Indigenous People
It is estimated that Indigenous Peoples safeguard 80% of the earth’s remaining biodiversity and manage lands that contain over 33% of the planet’s irrecoverable carbon stores. In many countries, Indigenous People and local communities are not afforded land rights and experience a range of negative impacts, as non-indigenous developments continue to expand into their ancestral territories.
Although UNDP made important progress in boosting the recognition and capacities of Indigenous People and local communities, more needs to be done to strengthen their ability to lead and manage a greater share of the resources dedicated to conservation and development.
Building on the ‘missing middle’
Subnational work is critical to achieving large-scale improvements in delivering improved ecosystems and biodiversity at scale, but it often proves to be the most challenging. UNDP holds a comparative advantage in providing innovative sub-national support – bridging the gap between national policies and field level conservation. The evaluation recommends that UNDP further build on this strength, seeking opportunities to reduce transactions costs and overcoming barriers to scaling.
Recommendations for UNDP
Based on its findings, the report laid out eight recommendations to strengthen the work of UNDP, to build on successes and to improve its contribution to sustainable development.
UNDP should prioritize building ownership of the Nature Pledge in regional bureaux and country offices and enhance collaboration with key partners. Given the continued declines in biodiversity, the action plan for the Nature Pledge must intently focus on strategies for scaling and replication of EMBC practices that have proven successful and include milestones to assess projections periodically.
UNDP senior leadership should create a global taskforce to target the drivers of biodiversity loss. The taskforce would galvanize a whole-of-UNDP response to fill a critical gap and bolster country office support for economic transitions.
UNDP should intently promote harmful subsidy reform as a key organizational offer. UNDP is a key player in this emerging area and its relationships with governments could unlock a significant amount of national financing that is currently working against biodiversity and sustainable development. As harmful subsidies are removed, UNDP should work with governments to channel the resources towards sustainable development, thus helping to alleviate ODA shortfalls and growing sovereign debt.
UNDP should develop a list of priority geographic areas to address the environmental and poverty nexus, and work with country offices in the most at-risk areas to create context-specific strategies. This would enable UNDP to better target support to areas where poverty is being deepened by environmental stress and would complement targeting criteria used in the environmental sector.
UNDP should engage with the current reshaping of international finance mechanisms to develop a combined offer of support to governments on ecosystems and biodiversity. This will require coordinated actions between headquarters and country offices.
UNDP should develop guidance and invest in human resources capacity development at the regional and country levels to enable country offices to provide governments with integrated support for ecosystems, biodiversity, climate and green growth agendas.
UNDP has the capability of building on its comparative advantage with sub-national governments and seek opportunities to reduce transaction costs and barriers to scaling. Sub-national work is critical to delivering improved ecosystems and biodiversity at scale but often presents the most difficult challenges because capacity is spread thinly, there are many stakeholders, and perceived investment risks are high. Many organizations cannot work effectively in this context, but UNDP has demonstrated important strengths. UNDP should collect and share its experience in this area and identify other countries that may offer quicker wins through ongoing decentralization processes. In its global engagements, UNDP should promote the value of working at the sub-national level for ecosystem services and seek to develop new funding lines.
UNDP country offices and regional bureaux should undertake more systematic capacity building of Indigenous and local institutions, rural communities and ethnic minority groups. This provides an opportunity to support women and minorities-led groups to advocate for their needs and rights, and to be able to meaningfully participate in relevant negotiation spaces.
