The UNEP-ELD State of Finance for Nature Report Series

About the report series

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), ELD Initiative and other partners are publishing the annual report series “State of Finance for Nature". The reports quantify varies dimensions of public and private finance flows to nature-based solutions (NbS) to tackle global challenges related to biodiversity loss, land degradation and climate change, and compares them to investment needs to meet targets of the Rio Conventions under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Climate, biodiversity, and land degradation goals can only be reached if investments into nature-based solutions quickly ramp up to USD 384 billion/year by 2025, more than double of the current USD 154 billion/year.

 

State of Finance for Nature 2023 Report

"State of Finance for Nature 2023: The big nature turnaround. Repurposing $7 trillion to combat nature loss." 

For the first time, this edition estimates the scale of nature-negative finance flows from both public and private sector sources globally. NbS provide critical investment opportunities as they are cost-effective and provide multiple benefits. The report focuses on current levels of NbS implementation and finance and how much finance for NbS is needed to reach specific Rio targets – limit climate change to 1.5°C, protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030 (30x30 target) and reach land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. The NbS finance gap is the difference between current finance flows and the Rio-aligned scenario NbS finance needs.

Key results

Despite government commitments, environmentally harmful subsidies have surged by 55% to reach US$1.7 trillion. The combined impact of public and private nature negative finance flows is enormously destructive and undermines potential increases in finance for NbS. Concurrently, NbS remain severly underfunded, with current flows at US$200 billion—merely a third of the necessary levels to achieve climate, biodiversity, and land degradation targets by 2030. 

Read the report and download additional material

Partners

State of Finance for Nature 2022 Report

“State of Finance for Nature: Time to act: Doubling investment by 2025 and eliminating nature-negative finance flow"

The State of Finance for Nature 2022 report quantifies public and private finance flows to nature-based solutions (NbS) to tackle global challenges related to biodiversity loss, land degradation and climate change. Current investments are compared to investment needed to meet targets of the Rio Conventions under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Key results

Climate, biodiversity, and land degradation goals can only be reached if investments into nature-based solutions quickly ramp up to USD 384 billion/year by 2025, more than double of the current USD 154 billion/year. Nature-negative flows from public sources need to be phased out, repurposed or reformed. Private capital only represents 17% of total investments into nature-based solutions. This will have to rise by several orders of magnitude in the coming years.

Read the report and download additional material.

Partners

State of Finance for Nature in the G20 report

"State of Finance for Nature in the G20: Leading by example to close the investment gap"

The State of Finance for Nature in the G20 report from 2022 attempts to capture the complete amount and future need for G20 country spending on nature-based solutions assets and activities.

Key results

The report reveals that current G20 investments in nature-based solutions are insufficient, at USD 120 billion/year, and G20 Official Development Assistance and private sector investments are small when compared with domestic government spending. The report calls for G20 countries to scale-up annual nature-based solutions spending to USD 285 billion by 2050 to tackle the inter-related nature, climate, and land degradation crises on which much of our economies are dependent, and provides recommendations to align development and economic recovery with nature goals through setting quantifiable monetary objectives, governance and policy options, and devices to facilitate systemic changes to meet this investment gap.

Read the report and download additional material.

Partners

State of Finance for Nature 2021

“State of Finance For Nature: Tripling investments in nature-based solutions by 2030”

The State of Finance for Nature 2021 report presents the results of a global analysis which tracks investment flows into nature-based solutions and identifies future investments needed to meet the biodiversity, climate and land restoration targets. As countries and companies step up their commitments to fight the climate and nature crises, it is of paramount importance to use the post-COVID-19 recovery to scale-up finance and investment in nature-based solutions to restore degraded land and tackle the climate and biodiversity crises while creating jobs.

Key results

If the world is to meet the climate change, biodiversity, and land degradation targets, it needs to close a USD 4.1 trillion financing gap in nature by 2050. The current investments in Nature-based solutions amount to USD 133 billion – about 0.10 per cent of global GDP, most of which comes from public sources.

Read the report and download additional material

Investments in Nature-based solutions need to triple by 2030

The video is embedded from YouTube. By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy. More information about YouTube's privacy policy can be found at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en&gl=en