Does Financing Biodiversity Reduce Biodiversity Risk? Evidence from EU Science and Innovation Funding
13 May 2025
12:15 -13:30
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Cambridge Judge Business School
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Finance seminar
Speaker: Dr Andre Poyser, AUT Business School
About the seminar
Recent calls for increased private capital in the financing of biodiversity have been silent on how effective this deployment of additional capital will be in improving biodiversity outcomes. This article interrogates the assumption that the increased financing being called for directly reduces species-level risks. Analysing EU-funded biodiversity projects across 25 countries over a 16-year period, I provide evidence that financing improves biodiversity data coverage but is largely ineffective for species integrity, species protection, endangered species survival, or forest conservation.
Using a dynamic difference-in-differences framework, I document that funding at both the extensive and intensive margins and positive policy shocks which increased financing of these biodiversity projects yielded minimal ecological gains. In more granular analysis of a case study of bird occurrences which occur near funded projects in Belgium I report no discernible impact.
I also study biodiversity projects which deploy or develop biotechnology and find that these projects provide possible use cases for private investment, in that, the patents and DNA technology they produce could provide future cash flows from which investors could benefit.
Speaker bio
Andre Poyser is a lecturer in the department of economics and finance at AUT Business School.
He recently completed his PhD which focused on the sustainable investment preferences of Māori asset owners, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
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No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Bet Brooke.