Project summary:

Uzbekistan joined the BIOFIN Initiative in 2021. The UNDP Country Office in Tashkent in collaboration with the Government of Uzbekistan reviewing its biodiversity finance strategies and policies. The project employs a participatory and inclusive approach to ensure the interests of a wide range of local stakeholders in the process, including the public, non-governmental and private sectors. In particular, the BIOFIN Uzbekistan project team works in close collaboration and coordination with the relevant ministries and agencies (ecology, economy and finance, forestry, hydrometeorology, agriculture, and water), as well as with civil society organizations (birds protection, beekeepers, and others).

The Biodiversity Finance Initiative – BIOFIN – is a global programme that developed, piloted, and is continuously improving a methodology to measure existing biodiversity expenditure levels, assess future financial needs, and design comprehensive plans to use finance tools and solutions that increase financing, reduce harmful expenditure, and improve financial effectiveness and efficiency of biodiversity management.

The biodiversity of Uzbekistan includes about 27 thousand currently known species. Among them, higher vascular plants, mosses, lichens, fungi and algae number about 11 thousand species, representatives of the fauna - more than 15.6 thousand species. The endemism of higher vascular plants in Uzbekistan is about 8%. Relic endemics make up 10-12% of the total number of endemic species.

Main objectives:

BIOFIN aims at providing support for countries to initiate a national policy dialogue and transformational process through a stepwise customizable approach to identify and mobilize resources and policies required to bridge the gap between the current approach to financing biodiversity and that needed to successfully implement national biodiversity plans and achieve national biodiversity targets.