To achieve our nature and climate goals requires a significant scale up in private sector investment in nature protection and recovery. Dr Nicola Ranger, Resilience and Development programme lead and Dorian van Raalte, Advisor, explain just how far we need to go.
Recent analysis by the UN Environment Programme found that investment in nature-based solutions must almost triple by 2030 to $542 billion if we are to meet global climate, land and biodiversity targets.
Several barriers have long held back the development of these markets for nature-based solutions (NbS), including the relatively long investment times and higher risks versus returns, the lack of a supportive policy environment and the need for specialist expertise. Consequently, investment levels have struggled to exceed $200 billion per year and much of this (eighty-two percent) comes from the public sector. To achieve our nature and climate goals requires a significant scale up in private sector investment in nature protection and recovery.
New research by the University of Oxford with the Global Center on Adaptation signals green shoots of optimism. The study analyses the structures of transactions in the market and develops a database of twenty-five of the largest emerging markets focused specialist nature funds to learn what works in delivering nature finance at scale. This complements work to develop new geospatial analytics and tools for data-driven investment in Bangladesh.
The full article describing the study is available from the Environmental Change Institute.