The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) is a global UNDP programme launched in 2012 and now active in more than 130 countries. It provides governments and NGOs with tools to measure biodiversity expenditure, assess financing gaps, and design plans to redirect financial flows from nature-negative to nature-positive activities.
Global Canopy estimates the annual global biodiversity financing gap at US$700 billion, and BIOFIN’s finance solutions span instruments from ecological fiscal transfers, green bonds, and compensation to regenerative landholders. The Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges sits within this global context as a region where BIOFIN-relevant flows remain conspicuously low relative to its ecological significance, with private and public capital yet to be mobilised at the scale its biodiversity values warrant.
The Foundation aims to provide long-term investment and support for for the region’s regeneration and natural capital works, safeguarding decades of volunteer endeavour while amplifying impact for future generations. A landscape-scale natural capital initiative covering 128,000 hectares of the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, C411 Country is developing a Conservation Action Plan using the internationally recognised Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, together with an investment prospectus that will translate community-owned conservation priorities into propositions for philanthropic, government, and emerging natural capital markets. The Foundation for Natural Capital (FNC) is being established as the investment-ready governance body to receive and steward that capital: a trusted, professionally governed entity capable of attracting the sustained financial flows this landscape requires, and of delivering on them at scale.
From "Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap" (September 2020). Paulson Institute / The Nature Conservancy / Cornell Atkinson Center report.
In a pivotal move to help protect and restore the natural assets and ecological riches of one of Victoria’s most iconic landscapes, Nangana Landcare Network and Agribusiness Yarra Valley have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish the Foundation for Natural Capital in the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges.
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