State of Finance for Nature 2026:
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its flagship report titled “State of Finance for Nature 2026,” which highlights a stark imbalance in global financial flows, revealing that for every USD 1 invested in protecting nature, nearly USD 30 is spent on activities that destroy it.
Key Highlights of the State of Finance for Nature 2026:
- Global financial flows to activities harming nature (e.g., fossil fuel extraction, unsustainable agriculture, deforestation) reached USD 7.3 trillion in 2023. This is approximately 7% of global GDP.
- The private sector accounts for USD 4.9 trillion of nature-negative flows, concentrated in sectors like energy, utilities, and basic materials.
Governments provide about USD 2.4 trillion annually in Environmentally Harmful Subsidies (EHS), dominated by fossil fuel support, followed by unsustainable agriculture and water subsidies. - These subsidies distort market prices, making environmental destruction cheaper than conservation.
- Investments in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) stood at only USD 220 billion.
- This creates a massive disparity, with harmful investments outpacing protective spending by a 30:1 ratio, resulting in a stark and unsustainable imbalance.
- However, spending on biodiversity and landscape protection is rising, increasing by 11% between 2022 and 2023, while international public finance for nature-based solutions in 2023 was 22% higher than in 2022 and 55% above 2015 levels.
- The NbS finance is overwhelmingly driven by public funds (90% of total NbS finance comes from governments).
- Private investment in NbS is negligible, accounting for just 10% of the total.
- To meet the Rio Convention targets, NbS investment must increase 2.5 times to reach USD 571 billion annually by 2030.
- The Rio Conventions from the 1992 Earth Summit target climate stability, biodiversity conservation, and land restoration.
- The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aims to limit warming to below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C.
- The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) seeks to conserve 30% of land, waters, and seas and restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
- The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) targets restoring 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030.
