Pres Ali calls for practical investment-driven action to protect biodiversity

…GBA headquarters design unveiled

President Dr Irfaan Ali has issued a call for action to more than 300 delegates from around the world, who have gathered in Georgetown for the second annual conference of the Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA), for practical solutions and financing aimed at biodiversity conservation.
Held under the theme, “Investing in Nature: From Global Commitments to Practical Action,” the two-day conference brings together leading global researchers, thinkers, financial institutions, policymakers and other key stakeholders with the aim of closing the financing gap for nature.

Pioneered by President Ali, the GBA was launched in July 2025 with 17 founding members and over the past year, its membership has now grown to some 147.
Delivering the feature address during the opening ceremony at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) on Friday morning, President Ali charged this group of global leaders with producing practical solutions to mobilise investment for biodiversity protection.
“The practicality of the Alliance is to have project-ready financing. This is critical. Philanthropy is great, but that cannot be the basis and foundation upon which we view biodiversity. It is, like any other commodity, important to our planet and carries immense value for research, medicine, the survival of our planet, watershed.”
“And this is what this Alliance, your work, your commitment would allow us to do, move to the practical solutions… An actionable framework, that is what is critical. Identifying the development gaps that is associated with biodiversity and creating that actionable framework. This is the call to action. And we hope that in doing so, we can make our contribution to solving global problems,” the Guyanese Leader stated.
More than 85 per cent of Guyana’s landmass is covered by forests and forms part of one of the world’s great reservoirs of biodiversity, providing environmental services of immense value to humanity. Additionally, Guyana is advancing plans for the long-term conservation of over 1 million hectares of pristine, biodiversity-rich forests.

Permanent headquarters of GBA
President Ali used the opportunity to announced that the design for the permanent headquarters of the GBA Secretariat in Guyana has been completed. The facility, designed in collaboration with the Qatar Foundation and the King’s Foundation, will house the secretariat and serve as a centre for learning, research and advancing the alliance’s work. The centre will support the alliance’s work plan and collaborate with the Iwokrama International Centre to strengthen scientific research, expertise and capacity-building in biodiversity-rich countries.

Mobilising investment
But while Guyana, like many other biodiversity-rich developing countries, is playing its part to protect and conserve these natural resources, Dr Ali contended that they must be rewarded. Achieving this, he noted, requires moving beyond traditional approaches to biodiversity finance in order to close the gap, and create new mechanisms to mobilise private investment, and ensure that biodiversity-rich developing countries receive a fair share of the economic value of the ecosystems they protect.
According to the Head of State, this is where the work of the GBA is important in ensuring that biodiversity conservation becomes the heart of economic planning and development.
“The expertise assembled in this room has already contributed enormously to this global understanding… They have done the hard work, the heavy lifting. We have to now transform the information into that actionable framework. We can have all the conversations we want about protecting biodiversity. But unless we change the economics of conservation, we will struggle to achieve the scale of change the world needs.”

“That is why we chose finance to be at the heart of this summit. Over the next two days, we need to advance practical ways to mobilise investment, create economic opportunities for countries and communities that protect biodiversity, and make conservation an internal part of economic development,” he asserted.
In the same breath, however, the Guyanese Leader went onto outline that commitment alone will not close the financing gap, noting that this is where the Alliance can make a difference, by translating global commitment into practical finance solutions, partnerships, and investment that make conservation economically viable and sustainable.
“We did not establish the Global Biodiversity Alliance simply to create another international forum for discussing the importance of nature. The world has enough declarations about the importance of biodiversity, but we now need practical mechanisms that turn commitment into investment, investment into opportunity, and opportunity into lasting protection for nature,” he emphasised.

Private sector opportunity
Against this backdrop, President Ali declared that this year’s conference, building on the outcomes of the inaugural summit, must be the beginning of a new phase for the Alliance, as he proposed three priorities that would drive the work over the next 12 months.
These including, bringing together the world’s best knowledge, science, and innovation to develop new solutions; working together to unlock finance and investment for biodiversity, and demonstrate that a new biodiversity economy can work in practice.
In this regard, the Guyanese Leader underscored the importance of the private sectors of biodiversity-rich countries in being part of the solution – something which he says is already being one in Guyana.
“I know that Guyana’s private sector has met this week to start building these international partnerships to explore new approaches to biodiversity finance. I commend our business leaders and their international partners for this initiative and look forward to hearing the outcomes of your discussion.”
“I want to ask the private sector from all of the countries of our alliance so far, maybe to come together and create an investment vehicle where we can have biodiversity resorts across each one of the destinations, and we create a marketing model where we market it as one brand, one brand with common values, common regulation, and a common platform. This is a massive private sector opportunity that we can explore together, bringing opportunity to the villages, the communities, and to our countries on a different scale.”