TARGETED LENDING TO ENHANCE BIODIVERSITY AND GENDER EQUALITY

The biodiversity finance facility in Uganda combines gender equality and biodiversity for the first time. The loans enable investments of small and medium female farmers, both male and female, in biodiversity-protecting measures. Financial training promoted the loans and connected business women at the same time.

It is a fact today that gender equality leads to better achievement of socio-economic development goals. The same holds true for environmental goals. The OECD (2021) fi nds that women around the world are disproportionately aff ected by climate change and loss of biodiversity. This is especially the case in some rural communities, where women frequently have less access to land and more restrictions than men, often face barriers to decent work and fi nance, and habitually shoulder an over-proportionate share of unpaid work.

Therefore, we have devoted attention to reaching both men and women within the technical assistance to the East African Development Bank in its biodiversity fi nance facility. The facility is a pioneering initiative by KfW. We designed the operational framework to lend to the target sectors – eco-tourism, forestry, aquaculture, climate-smart agriculture and renewable energy. The Finance Trust Bank and Opportunity Bank of Uganda lent out EUR 1.3 million for financing climate-proof investments of small and medium farmers as a pilot which we guided.

Both banks have a strong focus on providing access to finance to women and have a fairly favourable mix of male and female staff. For instance, our team trained 175 staff of which 48% were female. However, only 41% of credit officers and (middle) managers are women, whereas 58% of back office staff are female.

Most of the Financial Trust Bank’s biodiversity loans went to female borrowers. Their average loan amount is smaller than that of the Opportunity Bank of Uganda which provided biodiversity loans to more corporate borrowers – mostly male-controlled and managed. Therefore, we offered an additional two-day training for female entrepreneurs mobilised from customers of the Financial Trust Bank. This brought a triple win: to build financial management capacity, to strengthen networking among business women, and to promote the biodiversity loans.

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