The world spends billions to protect nature, but trillions are being invested in business activities that harm the environment.
The UN on Thursday issued a call for widespread financial reform as the most powerful way to shift global markets towards realising a better world, for people and the planet.
For every dollar invested in protecting nature, 30 dollars are spent on destroying it - that's the central finding of the State of Finance for Nature 2026 report, which calls for a major policy shift towards scaling up solutions that help the natural world - and support the economy at the same time.
Damage control
The data identifies several areas where the damage is particularly stark: utilities, industrials, energy and basic materials; and sectors which benefit from environmentally harmful subsidies - namely fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport and construction.
"If you follow the money, you see the size of challenge ahead of us," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP , in response to the report, contrasting the slow progress of nature-based solutions with harmful investments and subsidies which, she declared, are surging ahead.
"We can either invest in nature's destruction or power its recovery - there is no middle ground."
A wealth of solutions
As well as identifying the size of the imbalance, the report's authors lay out a vision of a "big nature turnaround," highlighting examples of solutions that both work, and are economically viable.
They include:
- greening urban areas to counter heat-island effects and improve liveability for citizens;
- embedding nature in road and energy infrastructure;
- Producing emissions-negative building materials.
The study also charts a path for phasing out harmful subsidies and destructive investment in systems of production and scaling up investments that are "nature-positive."
