The UNEP State of Finance for Nature 2026 report highlights a severe global imbalance in environmental finance, revealing that more than $30 is spent on activities that harm nature for every $1 invested in protecting it. Nature-negative financial flows reached around $7.3 trillion annually, while funding for nature-based solutions (NbS) stood at only $220 billion. Harmful subsidies for fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and resource-intensive sectors continue to dominate global spending patterns. Although investment in NbS has shown modest growth and some decline in fossil fuel financing is visible, progress remains far too slow. UNEP warns that NbS funding must rise to at least $571 billion per year by 2030 to meet global climate, biodiversity, and land restoration targets. Without redirecting financial systems toward nature-positive investments, the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution will intensify.
Click to View MoreThe article argues that global and national climate policies remain overly focused on forests while neglecting grasslands, despite their critical role as stable carbon sinks, biodiversity reservoirs, and livelihood systems for indigenous and pastoral communities. It highlights how institutional silos between climate, biodiversity, and land-degradation frameworks have marginalised grasslands, using examples from Australia, Brazil’s Cerrado, and India. The piece calls for integrating grasslands into national climate plans and NDCs, recognising community land rights, and building coordination among UN bodies to ensure effective, science-based, and socially just climate action.
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