Assessment of Financing for Biodiversity Conservation in Mexico: Links Between Biodiversity and Climate Change Adaptation Funds

At COP16 in Cali, Colombia, significant progress was made in biodiversity conservation efforts. In this regard, financing has been considered a key issue for achieving the objectives. The overview of Mexico’s experience with biodiversity finance in this study presents the experience of an emerging economy, which must finance pressing development priorities and biodiversity and climate action at the same time. Therefore, it is very important to find synergies in the available finance and look for new innovative options. The large overlap between the climate and biodiversity agendas and the international commitments derived from these also presents an opportunity to accelerate biodiversity funding. The methodology applied is the Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The study presents the national strategy on biodiversity in Mexico (ENBioMex), the financial needs of the country, and the existing biodiversity financing, stressing the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), and the Adaptation Fund in Mexico. The discussion section centers on analyzing the existing results and outlining some proposals to enhance the existing instruments, looking for innovation and synergies. In the authors’ opinion, the financing of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is the main instrument that can link biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change impacts, at the same time providing a sustainable way of life and guaranteeing the well-being of communities, but it is not adequately used. Finally, we present some concluding remarks and future research topics.