By Francis Ntow
Accra, Nov. 6, GNA – Banks and other financial institutions have been urged to scale up investments in biodiversity conservation and nature protection, using the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) Sustainable Banking Principles as a guiding framework for lending and investment decisions.
Participants at a stakeholder engagement on Ghana’s Biodiversity Finance Plan said consistent application of the Sustainable Banking Principles, increased impact investment and appropriate incentives could unlock funding to protect the country’s natural resources while ensuring that businesses and banks remained profitable and sustainable.
The workshop, organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ghana on Thursday, sought to identify practical solutions for mobilising finance for nature.
It brought together government officials, sector regulators, banking representatives and development partners to examine how financial flows could be redirected from activities that drive nature loss towards initiatives that promote environmental restoration.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the workshop, Dr Saeed Abdul Razak, Environment and Climate Lead at UNDP Ghana, urged the banking sector, which manages almost GH¢647 billion in assets, to increase investments in biodiversity conservation.
He said banks needed to deliberately scale up investments that protected and restored biodiversity, noting that their survival was closely linked to nature, as most of the businesses they financed depended on land, forests, water and other natural resources.
“To achieve this, banks are expected to give biodiversity the same attention they give to credit and market risk: screening clients for deforestation, overfishing, pollution and other nature-related impacts, while also directing part of their Corporate Social Responsibility funding into biodiversity, training and public awareness,” he said.
Dr Razak said the UNDP was working with the Government, through the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Finance, to develop a Biodiversity Finance Plan to address the disconnect between Ghana’s economic development pathway and nature conservation.
He said the plan was not only about mobilising new funding for biodiversity but also identifying and removing harmful incentives that undermined the environment and threatened livelihoods.
He said work was underway on a Biodiversity Finance Needs Assessment, a Policy and Institutional Review, and a Biodiversity Expenditure Review, which would subsequently be validated and shared with government and financial sector stakeholders.
Mr Raymond Ohene Ofori, Deputy Director, Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology, said the Government was pursuing a unified governance framework to ensure that sector players worked towards a common goal of safeguarding nature and the environment.
He said the Government’s policy direction, including the Environmental Protection Authority Act, 2025 (Act 1124), and Ghana’s Green Taxonomy, demonstrated its commitment to biodiversity conservation and sustainable finance.
Mr Kingsley Owusu Anom, Head of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) at the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), said the banking sector’s assets under management accounted for about 45 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He said almost all those assets depended, in one way or another, on nature, warning that the degradation of biodiversity posed risks to the survival of banks.
“When there is an impact on nature, an impact on biodiversity, it means that it is going to create risk for the very survival of the banks that we run,” he said.
Mr Anom encouraged banks to move beyond general environmental screening by developing specific biodiversity-focused financial products and integrating environmental and social risks into their lending decisions.
He urged banks to use their Corporate Social Responsibility budgets more strategically by directing part of the funds towards biodiversity conservation, capacity building, training and public awareness to help clients and communities appreciate the importance of protecting nature.
To encourage increased investment, he called on the Government to introduce additional incentives for institutions financing biodiversity initiatives, including tax rebates and support to access funding from multilateral institutions, the Green Climate Fund and other development partners.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe