What’s it about in short: blog post on the role of the pri­vate sec­tor in financ­ing bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion in India

When was it released: March 22, 2015

By whom: Divya Narain

More info: https://divyanarain.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/can-csr-provide-biodiversity-finance-in-india/

Short extract:

The sheer mag­ni­tude of the fund­ing gap, both inter­na­tion­ally and nation­ally, calls for rais­ing funds from all pos­si­ble sources. Pri­vate sec­tor fund­ing for bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion offers a promis­ing oppor­tu­nity to bridge this gap. Coun­tries have been explor­ing fea­si­ble mech­a­nisms to mobi­lize this hith­erto untapped source. Referred to broadly as Inno­v­a­tive Finan­cial Mech­a­nisms, the ones that involve pri­vate sec­tor fund­ing include Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets and Pay­ment for Ecosys­tem Ser­vices.

In 2013, India became the first coun­try to man­date Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­ity(CSR) through its new Com­pa­nies Act. The pro­vi­sions of the act require all com­pa­nies of a cer­tain net worth/turnover/net prof­its to set aside 2 per cent of the annual net prof­its for CSR activ­i­ties – an esti­mated 3 bil­lion USD of cap­i­tal will be gen­er­ated by the 16,000 com­pa­nies that come under the ambit of the Act.