The Importance of Biodiversity
Biodiversity (or biological diversity), the diversity of life on Earth, is all the different living things, such as plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. It is vital for the processes that support all life on Earth. Without the wide range of these living things, we will not have healthy ecosystems. We rely on these ecosystems for the air we breathe and the food we eat.
- It ensures food security. Less of it means less plants, animals and microorganisms, which is critical for the agricultural industry to sustain crop production needed to feed the global population.
- It supports communities. People and communities across the globe depend on biodiversity to maintain their livelihoods.
- It mitigates and provides resilience to climate change. Climate change affects biodiversity, while conserving the natural terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems and restoring degraded ecosystems essential for mitigating and providing resilience to climate change. Ecosystems play a key role in the global carbon cycle. It also provides a wide range of ecosystem services that are essential for human well-being and adapting to climate change.
- It supports human health. Ecosystems provide products and services (such as availability of freshwater, food and fuel sources) which are indispensable for good human health and productive livelihoods. On another note, as biodiversity declines, humans face greater risk of zoonotic disease, e.g. Ebola, Zika, influenza, and HIV/Aids. Degradation of ecosystems fosters the spread of infections by bringing us closer to dangerous pathogens.
- It underpins all economic development and human well-being. Healthy ecosystems provide essential services at the local, regional and global scales, such as food production, water purification, flood protection, and climate-change mitigation. It also provides jobs in agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and many other sectors.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), through its Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) Project, has been collaborating with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources - Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) since 2014 to identify the financing needs of the country based on the Philippine Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (PBSAP) and narrow the financing gap by implementing the finance solutions.
Identifying the financing requirement for the PBSAP involved the following assessments:
- Policy and Institutional Review
- Public and Private Biodiversity Expenditure Review
- Financial Needs Assessment for the PBSAP.
These assessments led to the development of the Biodiversity Finance Plan, recognizing the need to mobilize finance to support the biodiversity agenda of the Philippines.
This initiative supports the effective implementation of the PBSAP in fulfilling its vision of a biodiversity that is restored and rehabilitated, valued, effectively managed and secured, maintaining ecosystem services to sustain healthy, resilient Filipino communities, and delivering benefits to all by 2028.
The Biodiversity Finance Plan identifies financing solutions as transformative actions that will:
- Generate more resources for biodiversity;
- Attain cost-effective budget execution by eradicating overlaps in biodiversity functions;
- Eradicate expenditures that impact negatively on biodiversity conservation program and activities;
- pave groundwork for a responsive policy environment through greater awareness on biodiversity and financing of biodiversity; and,
- enhance institutional support towards monitoring of PBSAP.
One of the finance solutions identified to mobilize resources is a mobile gaming application.
Supported by the UNDP BIOFIN Project Animal Town is a mobile game application developed in 2020. The gaming application is a simple, casual simulation game, where the user plays as a new recruit in a biodiversity advocates team to help a group of talking animals manage a town to efficiently conserve biodiversity. It features quests (dispatch, scenario, and daily) and biodiversity trivia to inform and educate its users.
How does it generate finance for nature and where game revenues go?
The mobile application generates revenues through in-game purchases and ads, which in turn will be directed to priority biodiversity conservation projects of DENR-BMB
- United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Philippines and The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN): UNDP through BIOFIN is in charge of game development, assisting in promotion, and facilitating coordination between partners for the development of a revenue management operations manual.
- Forest Foundation Philippines: As the NGO partner of Animal Town, Forest Foundation Philippines currently supports the launch and digital promotions of the game app, including the initial management of the revenue it generates to fund initial biodiversity conservation projects. The Foundation is also tasked to develop the operations manual for its revenue management of the gaming application and subsequently be turned-over to DENR-BMB for its continued operations and revenue generation of the gaming application, as well as the grant provisioning for their biodiversity priority projects.
- Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB): DENR-BMB provides guidance and technical inputs to support game development and maintenance, assist in the promotion of the game, and work with partners to manage the game revenues anchored on the PBSAP and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF).
