The State of Finance for Nature report, released at COP28 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and its partners, reveals a sobering reality: nearly $7 trillion, or about 7% of the global GDP, is invested annually in activities detrimental to nature. This stark revelation brings into focus the urgent need to redirect these investments towards more nature-positive initiatives.
The report highlights a worrying disparity in investment patterns. While $200 billion was invested in nature-based solutions in 2022, investments in activities harming nature were over 30 times larger. This imbalance underlines the critical need to confront the combined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.
Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director, emphasizes the underfunding of nature-based solutions. “Nature-based solutions are dramatically underfunded. Annual nature-negative…