More than 8.5 billion meticals (135 million dollars) are being invested by the Biodiversity Conservation Foundation (BIOFUND) in financing 74 biodiversity conservation projects in the country, Radio Moçambique reported this Thursday, 29 August .
The information was shared by Jéssica Julaia, a BIOFUND representative, during the seminar organised by the Zambezi Agency as part of the 59th edition of FACIM.
According to the agency, these are projects that are being developed by more than 60,000 people, mostly in the buffer zones of the parks spread throughout the country.
In order to make the implementation of the projects more flexible, BIOFUND will make the first instalment available in a few days, budgeted at 6.3 billion meticals (100 million dollars).
In July 2023, at a conference called ‘SDGs and ESG Indices in Mozambique: challenges and opportunities for national companies and organisations’, more specifically on the panel ‘Pathways to Sustainable Development’, the director of Innovative Financing at the Biodiversity Conservation Foundation (BIOFUND), Sean Nazerali, said that biodiversity is fundamental for growth, stressing that it is aligned with the development of large cities, as it helps to eradicate poverty.
‘We defend biodiversity in every sense. No objective is achievable in a scenario where the environment is unsustainable. Natural resources (fauna and flora) are a source of income and are of great importance, so if they are degraded, they won’t be able to grow. We have to improve the state of conservation and invest in sustainability,’ he explained.
According to the official, incentives should be created, through the provision of accessible bank credit so that companies can operate in the environmental sector, and promote practices that help conserve resources, just as investments can’t end with natural gas and the exploitation of heavy sands.
‘You can’t breathe natural gas, you can’t eat titanium. In this sense, we need to invest seriously in biodiversity,’ he emphasised.
