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.