Reframing Biodiversity Finance towards the SDGs: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Directions with Implications for Emerging Economy Contexts

Biodiversity loss has emerged as a critical global challenge, intensifying the need for innovative financial strategies to support conservation and sustainable development. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric and thematic review of biodiversity finance, analysing 269 peer-reviewed publications from the Scopus database covering the period 1993 to March 2026. Using performance analysis, co-occurrence networks, thematic mapping, latent topic modelling, and trend analysis, the study examines how biodiversity finance has been conceptualised, structured, and evolved within academic discourse. The findings reveal a rapidly expanding yet partially fragmented field, predominantly anchored in ecological and sustainability-oriented research. Six thematic domains are identified, including environmental protection, sustainable development, biodiversity–climate interactions, forestry and land-use dynamics, ecosystem services, and species-level ecological systems. While recent work shows growing attention to financial mechanisms and policy instruments, finance-specific constructs remain relatively underrepresented. The study highlights uneven knowledge production patterns and limited financial integration, which are particularly relevant in emerging-economy contexts. It provides directions for advancing biodiversity finance through interdisciplinary integration, context-sensitive financial innovation, and enhanced private-sector participation to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).