Launch of the Natural Capital for African Development Finance (NC4-ADF) Programme

Nature is in crisis with the unprecedented decline of global biodiversity. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of the relationship between people and nature and thus reminds us that continued biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems could result to more profound consequences on human well-being and survival. Our response asks that we carefully assess and account for changes in the stocks of natural capital assets, which includes a better assessment of the quality and quantity of biotic and abiotic natural resources, such as water, land, forests, climate.

For the African continent, with some of the world’s richest biodiversity and important natural carbon sinks, this approach is critical. Embedding natural capital assessment and accounting into decision-making makes it easier to tackle the global climate crisis and is essential to engendering a green recovery from the global pandemic. To do so, the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have partnered to launch the programme, Natural Capital for African Development Finance (NC4-ADF), for mainstreaming natural capital approaches in African infrastructure finance projects. 

In this webinar, partners to NC4-ADF will officially launch the programme with leading experts in the field and present the findings from a pilot that applied natural capital approaches to an AfDB-supported infrastructure project in Tanzania. High-level representatives from government, multilateral development banks (MDBs), and international organizations will join the session to discuss practical solutions to incorporating natural capital assessment and accounting in development finance architecture, including practices in African sovereign credit ratings.

The NC4-ADF programme is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the MAVA Foundation for Nature. Project implementation is led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) with oversight by a Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) co-chaired by AfDB and GGKP. The JIC further includes representation from WWF, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and MAVA Economics for Nature (E4N), among others.