Nearly $7 trillion of public and private finance each year supports activities that directly harm nature, some 30 times the amount spent on nature-based solutions annually, according to a shocking UN report launched at COP28 in Dubai.
The report from the UN’s environmental wing, UNEP, also revealed that despite decades of calls for ending finance flows towards sectors that harm some of humanity’s most valuable assets, those investments currently account for a whopping 7 percent of global GDP.
This year’s State of Finance for Nature report is the first such survey to focus on what is known as “nature-negative finance flows” and underscores the urgency to address the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.
The report, launched to coincide with a day set aside at the latest UN climate conference for discussions on nature and land use, also highlighted the fact that these investments dwarfed the annual amount being invested in nature-based solutions, which totaled roughly $200 billion last year.
A staggering $5 billion of these nature-negative finance flows come from the private sector, which is 140 times larger than private investments in nature-based solutions, and almost half of that stems from only 5 industries: construction, electric utilities, real estate, oil and gas, and food and tobacco.
Turning the tide
At a press conference in Dubai, the head of UNEP’s Nature for Climate Branch, Mirey Atallah, said the report demonstrates that the climate crisis is still outpacing efforts to contain it.
She said finance is “the great enabler, and without money flowing in the right direction, we cannot achieve the targets we have set” at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio to address the interconnected challenges of climate change, desertification, and biodiversity loss.
While the report may provide very sobering conclusions, Ms. Atallah said UNEP wants to use the data to show that the money being used to harm nature can and must be diverted to have a positive impact, and she stressed that COP28 must be the turning point.
Speaking to UN News, the UNEP official said the chronic underfunding of nature-based solutions is not due to a lack of funds; “it’s just that the money is going in the wrong direction.”
She said convincing private companies to make the right investments requires putting in place the necessary legal frameworks to support directing funds towards nature-positive solutions.
Ms. Atallah noted that some private financial institutions have already started taking climate effects into account when approached for loans, which can help “turn the tide of investments.”
