North Macedonia already pays for its nature. It just can't see where the money goes
In January we opened a conversation with the broader public in North Macedonia with a simple proposition, nature and finance belong in the same room. In the op-ed When Nature Meets Finance: A New Chapter for Biodiversity in North Macedonia, written after the official launch of the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) in the country with an admission that biodiversity financing in the country was "fragmented, donor-driven, and still insufficient," and a promise that the work ahead would be data-driven and built on evidence.
Eight months later, the evidence is in. For the first time, North Macedonia can say with reasonable precision how much it spends on nature, what its biodiversity priorities would cost, and which institutional arrangements can help.
Three diagnostics, one baseline
The BIOFIN methodology, updated globally in 2024, follows a deliberate sequence. Before designing solutions, a country must understand its policy and institutional environment, measure what it currently spends, design a business as usual scenario and estimate what it actually needs. All three of these analytical components now exist in pre-validated advanced strategic documents that are in final validation.
The Policy and Institutional Review confirms what practitioners have long suspected: the legal and strategic framework for biodiversity is broadly sound and largely aligned with EU standards, but implementation lags. Enforcement of Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment remains uneven, coordination between the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning and ministries is fragmented, and the four national parks Galichica, Mavrovo, Pelister and Shar Planina operate largely on self-financing models that make long-term planning difficult. The revision of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which should follow some of the recommendations from the BIOFIN and is expected to be finalized in the second half of 2026, offers a genuine opening to align national targets with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Paid at home with money no one can see
Between 2020 and 2024 the country spent about MKD 16.5 billion (USD 297.5 million) on biodiversity, roughly 0.40 percent of GDP a year with a conclusion that Biodiversity finance in North Macedonia is not donor-driven. The methodology matters here because no budget line is labelled "biodiversity[i]”. To find the spending, the Biodiversity Expenditure Review had to rebuild it programme by programme, across forestry, water, wastewater, plant protection, urban greenery, rural development and the accounts of self-financing public institutions, counting only the share that serves nature. The environment ministry, where most people would look first, accounts for about 13 percent of the total. The review applied the principle of causa finalis, judging expenditure by its purpose rather than its accounting category, and used Biodiversity Attribution Rates to count only the biodiversity-relevant share of mixed programmes.
The resulting picture is informative. Public institutions account for 42.6 percent of the total, central government for 31.3 percent, bilateral international support for 14.8 percent, local government for 6.0 percent, private companies for 4.2 percent and multilateral support for 1.3 percent. Biodiversity finance, in other words, is not an environmental budget. It sits inside different agencies, ministries, agencies and projects related on various topics from forestry, water management, wastewater treatment, urban greenery to rural development. Donors have paid for much of the past decade's reforms, pilots and new investments. But the daily work of protecting forests, rivers, parks and green spaces is financed at home.
[i] Since 2019 the Ministry of Finance has asked every budget user to flag spending relevant to gender equality. It asks nothing about nature. A biodiversity tag in the annual budget circular, piloted first in the environment ministry, would extend a practice that already works. With the long-delayed medium-term provisions of the 2022 Law on Budgets due to take effect in 2028, there is a rare chance to build the tag into the new system from the start.
What the future holds
The Financial Needs Assessment estimates the cost of delivering biodiversity priorities at USD 171.36 million, of which nearly 70 percent is capital investment. Restoring degraded land, rivers and wetlands received about 0.1 percent of domestic public spending in 2020–2024, although restoration is the largest single need in the Financial Needs Assessment: USD 60 million of an estimated USD 171 million. Biodiversity knowledge and awareness received 0.6 percent.The single largest concentration USD 51.14 million falls within the Ohrid Region. The estimate is conservative: activities were costed only where the biodiversity link was clear.
The national parks show the strain most clearly. Galichica, Mavrovo, Pelister and Shar Planina largely pay their own way, and their 2024 accounts show most income absorbed by running costs; in three of the four, staff alone take more than half of all expenses. A park that must earn its payroll has little left for conservation, and every reason to keep relying on income from activities that do not always sit easily with protecting nature.
Furthermore, when it comes to the incentives, in 2026 the state plans about MKD 6.7 billion (USD 125 million) in agricultural and rural support. The two measures most directly aimed at nature, keeping high-mountain pastures grazed and conserving indigenous breeds such as Buša cattle, Pramenka sheep and the Balkan goat, receive about MKD 59 million together: under one percent of the total. Support for farm machinery fuel alone is almost nine times larger. Farm support is not the problem; farmers manage much of the country's landscape. But the balance shows what the system is built to reward. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework asks countries to reform incentives that harm nature and scale up those that help it. The subsidy programmes are where that commitment will be tested.
Without change, the trend points down. The expenditure review projects that if current patterns continue, biodiversity spending will keep rising in denars but fall from about 0.36 percent of GDP in 2025 to 0.31 percent by 2030. Nature would be losing ground just as the global framework's 2030 targets fall due.
Solutions targeting the biodiversity gap
The draft Biodiversity Finance Plan identifies 16 potential finance solutions across 4 focus areas: financial sustainability of protected areas, integration into public finance management, private-sector participation, and education/capacity. Ten, near-term development together are projected to mobilize approximately US$171.9 million between 2027 and 2031, same timeframe as the NBSAP, including up to US$120M via green bonds, US$13.6M via a new results-based Nature Protection Fund, and US$12M via an innovative wildlife conservation bond. The remaining 6 solutions (incl. biodiversity offsets, payments for ecosystem services, corporate disclosure and disaster-risk insurance) are flagged for further preparation beyond the current planning horizon. The Plan was presented at a validation workshop for PIR and BER on 15th of Octomber 2026, with finalization expected in 2027. Together, the quantifiable solutions could mobilize approximately USD 171.9 million between 2027 and 2031, strikingly close to the USD 171.4 million in identified needs. Before the project closes in 2027, we expect that at least one of these should be working, not just written down.
In January we argued that nature and finance belong in the same room. They are in it now. Much of the money, it turns out, is already there. The task is to see it, steer it, and add to it where it falls short.
As the delegations meet in Yerevan for COP17, where finance will again be the hardest conversation, the North Macedonia delegation will arrive with a measured baseline, a costed list of needs and a plan.