For every $1 spent protecting nature, $30 goes to destroying it

The UN recently 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.”

The numbers in brief

• In 2023, $7.3 trillion flowed into nature-negative activities.
• In the same year, only $220 billion supported nature-based solutions, and the vast majority came from public spending)
• However, the trend is positive: spending on biodiversity and landscape protection rose by 11 per cent between 2022 and 2023, and international public finance for nature-based solutions in 2023 was 22 per cent higher than in 2022, and 55 per cent above 2015 levels.