Energy & Climate
Working with nature
British Red Cross and WWF-UK partner to combat climate threats with nature-based solutions.
28 January 2025
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.
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, reveals $7.3 trillion in total ‘nature-negative finance flows’. This includes $4.9 trillion from private sources highly concentrated in a few sectors: utilities, industrials, energy and basic materials.
Environmentally harmful public subsidies to fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport and construction totalled $2.4 trillion in 2023.
$220 billion went to nature-based solutions, with close to 90% coming from public sources. This reflects a steady rise in domestic and international support for nature-based solutions.
Private investment in nature-based solutions amounted to only $23.4 billion – 10% of total Nature-based solutions investments.
Business and finance have yet to invest at scale in nature-based solutions, despite the growing awareness of dependencies, risks and opportunities related to nature.
Investments in nature-based solutions need to grow 2.5 times to $571 billion per year by 2030. This constitutes just 0.5% of global GDP (in 2024).
‘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.
‘While financing nature-based solutions crawls forward, harmful investments and subsidies are surging ahead. This report offers leaders a clear roadmap to reverse this trend and work with nature, rather than against it.’
INGER ANDERSEN
Executive director of UNEP
Reforming and repurposing private and public capital flows is the most powerful tool to shift markets toward sustainability. As a result, 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 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 nature-based solutions 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.
‘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.’
H.E. REEM ALABALI-RADOVAN
Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
The Nature Transition X-Curve also offers roadmaps 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 and 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.
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