The United Nations has issued a strong call for far-reaching financial reform, warning that current global investment patterns are driving environmental destruction rather than sustainability. According to the State of Finance for Nature 2026 report, for every dollar invested in protecting nature, around 30 dollars are spent on activities that harm it. The report argues that redirecting financial flows is the most powerful lever for shifting markets toward outcomes that benefit both people and the planet.
The findings reveal that environmentally damaging investments are heavily concentrated in sectors such as utilities, industrials, energy, and basic materials. The report also highlights the role of environmentally harmful subsidies, particularly in fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport, and construction, which continue to incentivize nature-negative activities at scale.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen stressed that tracking financial flows clearly illustrates the magnitude of the challenge. She noted that while progress on nature-based solutions remains slow, investments and subsidies that damage ecosystems are accelerating. Andersen emphasized that governments and markets face a clear choice between continuing to finance nature’s destruction or actively investing in its recovery.
Beyond highlighting the imbalance, the report outlines a vision for a large-scale “nature turnaround” built on practical and economically viable solutions. These include greening urban spaces to reduce heat stress and improve living conditions, integrating nature into road and energy infrastructure, and producing building materials that deliver net-negative emissions. Such approaches demonstrate that protecting ecosystems can also support economic resilience and development.
The report also calls for phasing out harmful subsidies and destructive investment models while rapidly scaling up finance for nature-positive systems of production. This shift, it argues, is essential to aligning economic growth with biodiversity protection and climate goals.
In financial terms, the imbalance remains stark. In 2023, an estimated $7.3 trillion flowed into nature-negative activities, while only $220 billion supported nature-based solutions, most of it from public sources. However, the report notes encouraging momentum, with spending on biodiversity and landscape protection increasing by 11 percent between 2022 and 2023, and international public finance for nature-based solutions rising significantly compared to previous years.
