Innovative financial mechanisms explore supplementary yet more sustainable financial and economic approaches to human interaction with biodiversity and ecosystem services. Based upon the modern financial and economic methods, innovative financial mechanisms seek to develop financial and economic solutions to the current biodiversity crisis and to transform the prevailing financial and economic systems that have been distortionary in sustaining life on earth, thus avoiding unsustainable commodification of the nature. Innovative financial mechanisms are considered as important instruments to mobilise new and additional financial resources for achieving the Convention’s objectives, and explored in the broad context of innovation for biodiversity while recognising the close synergies between conserving biodiversity, combating desertification, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.