Financing Nature, A new report by our partners The Paulson Institute and The Nature Conservancy (both participants in the debt for nature working group) highlights a $700 billion annual funding gap for biodiversity, as well as the $500 billion per year spent by governments in economic support that is harmful to biodiversity.
The report highlights opportunities for ‘financing green'; mobilizing private finance for projects that contribute to the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services and ‘greening finance’ directing broader financial flows away from projects with a negative impact on biodiversity and ecosystems.
The global bond markets increased from US$ 87 trillion in 2008 to more than US$255 trillion in 2019, driven by the growth of bond issuance in the public and private sectors, primarily in emerging markets. Of this, green debt represents a small (<0.5%) but growing segment of the bond markets.
The report references F4B's work on sovereign debt.
The debt crisis derived from the COVID-19 pandemic and linked economic downturn demands a critical global economic response, but it also represents an opportunity to support the issuance of biodiversity-related green debt products by developing countries, with the integration of biodiversity targets into new debt agreements, reducing the cost of capital and ensuring the protection of natural assets.
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