Investments into nature-based solutions need to be quickly ramped up to USD 384 billion annually by 2025, more than double of the current USD 154 billion annually to successfully reach climate, biodiversity, and land degradation goals, according to the State of Finance for Nature report released today.
The State of Finance for Nature report underpins that with sufficient finance, nature-based solutions provide benefits that contribute to climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals in an integrated manner while also promoting human wellbeing. This “triple” win potential is particularly alluring given the current global economic situation. Yet, nature-based solutions are significantly underfinanced, revealed the report. It calls for a quick ramp up of investments into nature-based solutions by 2025. While repurposing negative flows from public sources would help plug some of the gap, there needs to be a significant increase in private sector investment in Nature-based solutions.
The authors of the report – produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and ELD in collaboration with Vivid Economics – urge the private sector to increase investments in sustainable supply chains, reduce activities with negative impact on climate and biodiversity and offset unavoidable impacts through high integrity nature markets, pay for the ecosystem services it uses and invest in nature positive activities. Tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation with immediate action requires that current global investments need to increase by USD 230 billion each year to 2025. Governments currently provide 83% of NbS finance flows, yet will be unlikely to dramatically increase these flows due to fiscal challenges linked to conflict, debt and poverty.