For every $1 world invests in nature, it spends $30 on destroying it: UN report

New Delhi: For every $1 the world invests in protecting nature, it spends $30 on destroying it. This stark imbalance is the central finding of a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report released on Thursday.

It calls for a major shift in global financing of nature-based solutions and phasing out harmful investments to deliver high returns, reduce risk exposure, and enhance resilience.

‘The State of Finance for Nature 2026’, which uses data for 2023, finds $7.3 trillion in total nature-negative finance flows with $4.9 trillion from private sources highly concentrated in a few sectors — utilities, industrials, energy, and basic materials and public environmentally harmful subsidies to fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport and construction of $2.4 trillion in 2023.

“If you follow the money, you see the size of challenge ahead of us. We can either invest into nature’s destruction or power its recovery — there is no middle ground,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.

“While financing nature-based solutions crawls forward, harmful investments and subsidies are surging ahead. This report offers leaders a clear road map to reverse this trend and work with nature, rather than against it,” Andersen said.

Since reforming and repurposing private and public capital flows is the most powerful tool to shift markets toward sustainability, the report introduces a new Nature Transition X-Curve, a framework designed to help policymakers and businesses sequence reforms and scale up high-integrity nature-based solutions (NbS) across all sectors of the economy.

The framework charts a path for phasing out harmful subsidies and destructive investment in entrenched systems of production, while simultaneously scaling up NbS and nature-positive investments.

It offers specific options to public and private sector businesses across the supply chain.

“The world’s financial flows need an urgent shift — from degrading the environment to investments in nature-based solutions” said Reem Alabali-Radovan, Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany.

“The private sector plays a key role in this. German development policy supports partner countries in valuing their natural capital so that it can be taken into account in key policy decisions. This can lead the way to a sustainable and future-proof economy.”

The Nature Transition X-Curve also offers road maps to meet the challenge of a ‘trillion-dollar nature transition economy’.

The report highlights examples of how this is already being applied by governments and business leaders around the world: Greening urban areas to counter heat-island effects and improving liveability for citizens; embedding nature in road and energy infrastructure; producing emissions-negative building materials using carbon dioxide.

A crucial principle in nature-positive investments is to ground them in local ecological, cultural, and social contexts, while ensuring their inclusivity and equity.

IANS