Biodiversity—encompassing the variety of life on Earth at genetic, species, and ecosystem levels—provides essential services that support human survival and well-being. Biodiversity is crucial for healthy ecosystems, supporting food, clean air and water, medicine, income, and climate stability. While high concentrations exist in the tropics—in tropical rainforests and coral reefs—biodiversity benefits all environments by supporting life-sustaining services. Biodiverse wetlands are natural filters that improve water quality, and biodiversity holds cultural significance, especially for Indigenous Peoples. The decline of biodiversity severely threatens ecosystem services, food and water security, economies, the environment, and human health.

Biodiversity underpins global food security and livelihoods. A variety of wild species are vital to agriculture, especially pollinators that fertilize crops; more than 75 percent, or between $235 billion and $577 billion, of annual global food production depends on them (IPBES 2016). Biodiversity supports soil health, nutrient cycling, photosynthesis, and habitat provision. A lack of diverse soil organisms can result in decreased soil fertility, which may cause lower agricultural yields and increased risk of desertification. Diverse marine ecosystems bolster fish populations, boost disease resistance, and increase environmental adaptability (IIED 2014). Biodiversity also provides essential resources—such as food, water, energy, and medicine—for 79 percent of those living below the poverty line.

Biodiversity and climate change are intrinsically linked: biodiversity is essential for mitigating the effects of climate change, while climate change presents considerable risks to ecosystems and species. Diverse forests, wetlands, oceans, and coastal ecosystems are carbon sinks, helping to regulate climates (Seymour et al. 2022). Mangroves store more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests while also reducing disaster exposure and economic loss (Hochard et al. 2019; Sanderman et al. 2018). Restoring ecosystems enhances disaster resilience. Climate change drives biodiversity loss by raising temperatures, altering rainfall patterns, and causing extreme weather, leading to habitat loss, species displacement, and extinction risks.

However, biodiversity loss is occurring at an unprecedented pace, prompting scientists to caution that we may be nearing critical thresholds that risk causing irreversible ecosystem degradation. Species across all groups are disappearing at rates tens to hundreds of times above the 10-million-year average (IPBES 2019). There has been a catastrophic 73 percent decline on average in the monitored wildlife population in just 50 years (1970–2020; WWF 2024). Approximately 50 percent of live coral reef cover and over 85 percent of wetlands have been lost. More than one-third of global tree species face extinction, highlighting deforestation’s threat to biodiversity. Between 1990 and 2020, 420 million hectares of forest were lost worldwide—an area equivalent in size to the European Union (EU). Notably, more than 90 percent of this deforestation took place in tropical regions. Such significant declines in healthy ecosystems are bringing the Earth closer to critical tipping points.

There are five main drivers of biodiversity loss, mostly associated with human behaviors. The drivers are changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, invasive species, pollution, and climate change (IPBES 2019). Deforestation, urbanization, agricultural expansion, and infrastructure development contribute to habitat destruction and fragmentation, resulting in species decline and ecosystem loss. The expansion of beef, soy, and oil palm production has been a significant contributor to widespread deforestation and biodiversity decline. In 2023, 6.4 million and 62.6 million hectares of native forests were clear-cut and degraded, respectively, at rates exceeding pre-2021 pledge levels. Poaching, overfishing, and unsustainable harvesting have led to population declines and extinctions. For example, 38 percent of global fish stocks are fished at unsustainable levels. Invasive species are associated with about 40 percent of endangered species listings. Air, water, and soil pollution harms wildlife and disrupts ecosystems, leading to biodiversity loss. Climate change is causing mass plant and animal mortality. Economic actors may not take responsibility for biodiversity loss since they do not receive all of its benefits. Limited awareness of ecosystem service value also restricts conservation efforts.

The international community has entered into agreements to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, but implementation is insufficient. At the 1992 Earth Summit, 150 leaders signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to support conservation, sustainable biodiversity use, and equitable benefit sharing. Governments reconvened in Aichi in 2010 (at the 2010 Conference of the Parties, or COP10) and set 20 biodiversity targets. A decade later, most of the CBD objectives, but none of the targets, were achieved (CBD 2020). Parties to the CBD adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in 2022 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2050, while setting interim targets of effectively conserving and managing at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and ocean by 2030. Sufficient funding has not been forthcoming: the GBF estimates that $700 billion is needed annually to achieve the targets. In Rome in 2025, parties agreed to mobilize $200 billion annually and to increase flows to developing countries but acknowledged the persistence of the financing gap.

Global biodiversity agreements have increasingly recognized the importance of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in protecting biodiversity. IPLCs manage 80 percent of global terrestrial biodiversity by exercising customary rights over half of the world’s lands (IPBES 2019; RRI 2020). Forests overseen by Indigenous Peoples, whether formally recognized or governed by traditional practices, are significantly less prone to deforestation than those managed by external entities (Blackman and Veit 2018; Ding et al. 2016; Fa et al. 2020; Nepstad and Schwartzman 2006; Walker et al. 2020). This underscores the vital role of Indigenous guardianship, yet Indigenous Peoples receive only 0.13 percent of climate change funding, with their rights protected on just 10 percent of the land they inhabit (FAO 2021b; Garnett et al. 2018). Therefore, the GBF named IPLCs as key partners in biodiversity protection, restoration, and sustainable use. The 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cali established a permanent subsidiary body for Indigenous Peoples, with a formal role in conservation decision-making, and created the Cali Fund to ensure equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources. However, national-level efforts do not always align with these global commitments because of unrecognized rights, forced evictions, marginalization, threats from extractive industries, and inadequate financial support.

Role of the World Bank Group

The World Bank Group has articulated a strong corporate commitment to support a livable planet that is dependent on measurable biodiversity outcomes. In October 2023, the Bank Group reframed its vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet. Its Corporate Scorecard stresses that no country is immune to the declines in biodiversity that undermine development and exacerbate poverty. National challenges tracked on the Scorecard (client context indicators) focus on preserving and restoring biodiversity. These challenges include establishing economies with increased renewable natural capital, increasing and maintaining fish stocks within sustainable levels, and establishing and maintaining protected terrestrial and aquatic areas. The Bank Group results indicator, “hectares of terrestrial and aquatic areas under enhanced conservation/management,” requires projects to show evidence of improving the extent or condition of these areas, enhancing biodiversity or other ecosystem services and addressing the drivers of nature loss.1 The Global Challenge Program on Forests for Development, Climate, and Biodiversity also seeks to scale up sustainable forest landscapes and ecosystem solutions to enhance development, climate, and biodiversity outcomes. The Bank Group was 1 of 10 multilateral development banks to sign the Joint Statement by the Multilateral Development Banks on Nature, People and Planet, which emphasizes tackling the drivers of nature and biodiversity loss, promoting nature-positive investments, and advancing progress reporting. The statement reads: “nature (including ecosystems and their biodiversity), plays a critical role in providing resources and services that underpin and support the planet and people in terms of human health and wellbeing; economic growth, jobs, and livelihoods, food security; and air, water, and soil quality.”

In Unlocking Nature-Smart Development: An Approach Paper on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the Bank Group placed a renewed emphasis on biodiversity and nature, including the need to take a whole-of-economy approach. In this paper, the Bank Group highlights the importance of adopting such an approach to address the drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss by scaling up biodiversity financing, establishing a solid scientific and economic base for action, and implementing equitable and inclusive measures to address the biodiversity crisis (World Bank Group 2021). Other sector studies, such as the Blue Biodiversity report (World Bank 2024a), highlight the importance of conserving aquatic biodiversity for social and economic benefits. These initiatives build on more than 30 years of biodiversity commitments, including the 1990 publication The World Bank and the Environment: First Annual Report and the World Bank’s Environment Strategy (2012–22), Toward a Green, Clean, and Resilient World for All, which encompassed commitments to conserve and restore biodiversity while adopting more integrated, economywide approaches and innovative financing solutions. The World Bank also mitigates biodiversity risks through its Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) Environmental and Social Standard 6 (ESS6).

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) also tracks its nature-based investments using a common set of principles. “Nature-positive” refers to increasing the resilience of our planet and societies to stop and reverse nature loss. This approach aims to enrich biodiversity, store carbon, purify water, and reduce pandemic risk. IFC also mitigates the risk of biodiversity loss through its Performance Standard on Environmental and Social Sustainability (PS6).

The Evaluation

This evaluation asked the following question: How well is the Bank Group supporting clients to address biodiversity loss? To answer this question, we posed two main subquestions:

• Evaluation question (EQ) 1: How well is the World Bank addressing biodiversity challenges through conservation-focused activities?
• EQ2: How well are the World Bank and IFC supporting activities with potential biodiversity benefits in key production sectors, and are those activities likely to achieve such benefits?

A third question on addressing risks was subsumed into the first two questions (using safeguards, ESF, and Performance Standards) and was addressed by covering the Bank Group’s experience with biodiversity offsets.

The evaluation scope involves three dimensions. It covers the periods FY 2010–24 for conservation activities and FY15–24 for production activities. The longer time frame was needed to measure land-use change in the conservation portfolio, and the shorter time frame was assigned to production activities, recognizing the recency of commitments to reintroduce biodiversity commitments in production sectors, especially agriculture. The evaluation covers the World Bank for conservation-focused activities, the World Bank and IFC for production activities, and the Bank Group (the World Bank, IFC, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency [MIGA]) for biodiversity offsets. The evaluation scope also covers the Bank Group’s engagement at a national level but not at a global convening level.

We used triangulated methods to answer the EQs, which also contributed new knowledge for the Bank Group and the global community. Further information can be found in appendix A.

• Literature and portfolio review. We conducted focused literature reviews to identify good practice and to identify the Bank Group’s commitments and its advantages. We deployed text analytics and search algorithms to process, analyze, and organize portfolio data. Our team developed specialized AI models that automatically classified and organized critical information into distinct portfolios (for conservation, integration, and offsets). We developed structured templates, integrating data visualization to analyze Bank Group performance against the literature and Bank Group commitments.
• Geospatial analysis. We conducted geospatial analyses to identify World Bank conservation activities for FY10–24. We identified protected areas (or other physical conservation areas) supported by the World Bank across 130 projects. Within these, we geolocated 880 unique sites with conservation activities. Of these, we matched 605 sites with the World Database on Protected Areas, which includes 305,198 registered areas (275 sites could not be matched). This marks the first time that the full range of World Bank–financed protected areas has been identified and mapped. Of the 605 sites, we have geospatial data points for 585 of them. For geolocated areas, we performed geospatial analysis to assess relevance (siting) and effectiveness (tree cover change over time, which we assessed using consistent spatial and temporal resolution, for the period FY16–24). We organized analysis of tree cover into two cohorts: projects approved in FY10–14 and those approved in FY15–19. The first cohort assesses the impact of World Bank support after project close; the second cohort assesses project effects during and immediately after implementation.
• Expert-led deep dives. Experts led in-depth analysis on land and resource rights, IPLCs, and biodiversity offsets to deepen portfolio results.
• Review of core country diagnostics. We assessed the extent to which the Bank Group is integrating biodiversity into the most recent Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for each country or country grouping (n = 113) and in 57 disclosed Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs).
• Exploratory case studies. We analyzed technical or policy mechanisms that had achieved positive ecological and economic effects from integrating biodiversity into key production sectors; these case studies were conducted in Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Peru, and Viet Nam, and virtually for Mozambique.