Nature conservation funding must triple globally: UN

A joint United Nations (UN) report published this week asserted the need for G20 leading industrialised nations to embrace their role as influential leaders against climate change, by aligning development and economic recovery with international nature and climate goals.

The joint report on finance by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), World Economic Forum (WEF) and Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, pointed out the measures the wealthy nations can take to better support nature-based solutions (NbS). 

In addition to promoting sustainable farming and supply chains or initiatives such as creating green spaces in cities to tackle rising heat, the G20 states, a group representing many of the world’s most advanced economies, must address interrelated climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises, the State of Finance for Nature in the G20 highlighted.

This can be achieved by increasing the collective annual investments in nature to US $ 285 billion by 2050, the report said.

The publication estimated that G20 spending, including large emerging economies, stood at US $ 120 billion in 2020, which was directed towards official development assistance (ODA). 

The spending gap in non-G20 countries was even larger and more difficult to bridge. Only 11 percent or US $ 14 billion annually is contributed by the private sector. The investment is significantly small, even though they contributed 60 percent of the total national GDP in most G20 countries.  

The G20 investments represented 92 percent of all global NbS investments in 2020.  
The report findings stressed the urgency to increase net-zero and nature-positive investments to close these finance gaps and increase NbS investments by at least US $ 165 billion per year, especially in ODA and private sector spending.  

At global level, future investments in nature must rise fourfold by 2050, equalling an annual investment of over US $ 536 billion. 

As G20 countries carry out most of the global economic and financial activity with fiscal leeway, the nations have the capacity to meet that target, the report said.