Zambia is endowed with rich biodiversity and extensive natural ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, freshwater systems and wildlife habitats that provide essential services for communities and the economy. The country’s natural capital supports agriculture, fisheries, forestry, tourism and rural livelihoods, making biodiversity conservation an important foundation for sustainable development.
However, Zambia’s biodiversity faces growing pressures from habitat loss and degradation, deforestation, unsustainable natural resource use, climate change and competing demands for land and water. At the same time, financing available for biodiversity remains insufficient to meet national conservation and restoration priorities. Closing this gap requires more effective use of existing public resources alongside greater engagement of the private and financial sectors and innovative sources of finance.
UNDP BIOFIN is supporting Zambia to build a more systematic approach to financing biodiversity. During its initial phase, the programme completed the Policy and Institutional Review (PIR), Biodiversity Expenditure Review (BER) and Finance Needs Assessment (FNA). These assessments informed the development and national validation of Zambia’s Biodiversity Finance Plan (BFP), providing an evidence-based framework for identifying, prioritizing and implementing finance solutions.
Building on this foundation, UNDP BIOFIN is supporting Zambia to move from analysis to implementation, with a focus on mobilizing public, private and financial-sector resources, improving the effectiveness of biodiversity expenditure and developing finance solutions that can help close the biodiversity financing gap at scale.
1. Technical Assistance for Green Bond Market Development and Transaction Preparation
The main objective of this finance solution is to develop Zambia’s green bond market with a view to have a some of the proceeds of green bonds go towards financing biodiversity conservation initiatives. Having finalized the development of the green bond guidelines and listing rules which have since been gazzeted, the next steps are mainly capacity building of the Securities and Exchange Commission who will be approving green bond applications as well as the newly formed Green Finance Mainstreaming Working Group in terms of reviewing proposals, development of customized standards and taxonomies for specific sectors as well as provision of TA support in green bond structuring support to potential issuers.
2. Mainstreaming biodiversity in the Green Finance Policy and implementation plan for the Financial Sector
The main objective of this finance solution is to mainstream biodiversity conservation, climate change and land degradation ethos into the soon to be developed Green Finance Policy for the financial sector. The development of the Green Finance Policy for the financial sector will help to provide a platform to mainstream biodiversity into the credit policies and other financial sector products especially in terms of credit allocation across other sectors.
3. Developing a Green Finance Tagging/reporting System for the Financial Sector
The main objective of this finance solution is to mainstream biodiversity conservation, climate change and land degradation markers into the reporting systems of the financial sector so that it is easier to track the flow of green finance in these sectors.
The expected result is twofold (i) Enable the tracking of green finance through the financial sector (ii) Once tracking commences, it will be easier to make decisions to lobby for an increased allocation of financial products for the green sector. At present, it is not known how much the financial sector contributes in terms of green finance which makes it difficult to make policy decisions.
