Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy unlocks the use of biotechnology to create economic productivity solutions around the use of biological resources and ecosystem services to establish a regenerative economy, sustaining the conservation and restoration of biodiversity.

As the importance of natural capital is increasingly recognized, international support such as the Bonn Challenge seeks to regenerate 9 million degraded hectares of forest in an initiative that has been recognized by several LAC governments.

Technical Assistance

Provide to different national economic sectors, with particular focus on areas such as human resources and the environment.

Financial Innovation

Encourage private and public capital funding for climate-related investment.

Strategic Dialogue and Partnerships

Promote dialogue with regulators, capital markets and financial sector stakeholders and mobilize financing, knowledge, and networks.

Where it is implemented

Brazil
Colombia
Ecuador
Peru
Surinam

Why Bioeconomy?

Bioeconomy involves integrating conservation of biological resources and related knowledge into all economic sectors as part of a movement towards a sustainable economy using biological wealth to strengthen production and development while safeguarding and regenerating existing biodiversity. It is also compatible with meeting the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals, and more recently the Sustainable Development Goals, closely connected to the concept of the Green Economy to operationalize development goals within the global economy. Moreover, while significant private investment is needed to close the funding gap for restoring and conserving ecosystems, currently only 1% of new or renewed private sector capital investment is applied towards closing the biodiversity investment gap. Crucially, in doing so creating as potential economic benefits quality employment, exports, growing productive capacity, and regional growth and productivity.

Bioeconomy and barriers to investment:

Scarce finance availability.

Stakeholder and institutional capacity for blended finance are still fragile.

Requirements for diverse governments coordination.

Success Cases

IVE Exchange ▾

IVE Exchange

The Intrinsic Value Exchange (IVE) brings innovation by bridging of traditional finance stock exchange model with monetization of natural capital and ecosystem services. IVE is listed as “stock exchange designed to value and price natural capital, that creates innovative financial products and employs exchange technologies to value and convert natural capital to financial capital”.

IVE secures Conservation International (CI) as a strategic partner attributing to CI’s active experience in conservation and monetization of ecosystem services, as well as country expertise and joint public-private partnership efforts in Surinam.

Surinam is prominent for its biodiversity as the world’s country with most forested areas, with a total of 80% being primary forest and holds 8% of world’s surface fresh water. Current global Green GDP is estimated to be over $146 trillion a year (Natural Capital Lab, 2020).

The Intrinsic Value Exchange (IVE) conducted a natural capital appraisal for the Central Suriname Nature Reserve (CSNR) where a surveyed 1,600,000 hectares of tropical rainforest are estimated to produce between $1.3 billion and $3.8 billion in ecosystem services per year (Natural Capital Lab, 2020).

Program will account for a range of key thematic area indicators that include avoided deforestation rate, carbon storage and net job creation through sustainable practices (IDB, 2020).