Resources

Short case study outlining lessons learned from developing the eco.business Fund's environmental and social impact framework.

Short case study outlining lessons learned from developing the Amazon Biodiversity Fund's environmental and social impact framework.

Short case study outlining lessons learned from developing the &Green Fund's environmental and social impact framework.

Five Years of Capacity Building - This brief showcases the activities and impact of work undertaken on capacity building for sustainable land use finance by UNEP’s Climate Finance Unit in collaboration with partners such as UNEP’s Finance Initiative and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre covering a 5-year period from 2018 to 2023. It highlights successful projects that promote healthy and productive ecosystems, mitigate climate impacts, and reduce deforestation in commodity supply chains.

Producing enough food to sustain the fast-growing global population has driven a rapid expansion of agricultural production and with it, environmental degradation including deforestation, soil degradation, habitat loss and rising emissions. To address this challenge, the AGRI3 Fund aims to mobilize USD 1 billion in additional capital to support a transformational shift in agricultural land use and avert deforestatiom, with a particular focus on the key sectors of beef and soy in Brazil. AGRI3 and Rabobank Brazil have launched the Renova Pasto, a 10-year standardized loan product for pastureland renovation to enable farmers to restore their pasturelands and achieve nature positive impacts at scale.

The RSCF has achieved significant environmental and social impacts in its first full year of operations, with four partners onboarded and new interest in the Facility’s support creating a positive outlook for 2023. Read more about RSCF’s supported activities, partners and future priorities in the Facility’s Annual Report 2022.

The 2022 Impact Report of UNEP’s Climate Finance Unit focused on six impact areas across the sustainable land-use finance value chain: Innovative financial solutions; Impact investing and early-stage business development; Scaling up sectoral commitments Fiscal incentives; Positive indicators and targets; and Finance risks and opportunities.

If the world wants to halt biodiversity loss, limit climate change to below 1.5C and achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030, investments in nature-based solutions must be doubled.

With sufficient finance, nature-based solutions have a ‘triple’ win potential that is particularly alluring given the current global economic situation.

$ 154 billion invested in nature-based solutions.

Much of nature finance gap to be filled by private investment in nature with governments providing an enabling environment

Accelerating the reform of harmful public financial flows can help close the nature-based solution finance gap.

The annual finance gap to increase marine protected areas to 30% by 2030 is between $ USD 10 billion and USD 14 billion.

A Roadmap to Implementation for Financial Institutions and Policy Makers

UNEP State of Finance for Nature report found that private sector investment in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) represents only 17 per cent of total NbS investment, representing an enormous opportunity for private sector actors to increase financial flows to NbS, whether that be through institutional, commercial or impact investment.

Time to act: Doubling investment by 2025 and eliminating nature-negative finance flows.

Leading financial institutions from the Good Food Finance Network’s High Ambition Group announce ambitious targets in the food sector ahead of COP27, demonstrating how financial institutions can work together to increase the capital invested in sustainable food systems, use their influence to improve policies and access to finance, and drive companies to adopt more sustainable food systems practices that deliver healthier diets.

A global training designed to help the banking community to understand how deforestation-risk commodities in their investment portfolios contribute to their overall risk exposure and how to mitigate this exposure through investment in nature-based solutions.

The great food systems transformation is one of the most consequential challenges of our time, and could be the biggest opportunity for new value creation in world history. The Good Food Finance Network (GFFN) exists to make sure we get this right.

At the current rate of deforestation, Côte d’Ivoire is in the process of irretrievably losing all its forest cover by 2034. The country is the world’s largest producer of cocoa. The extension of farmland for cocoa cultivation is one of the main drivers of deforestation.

Coffee production in the Central Highlands faces a multitude of challenges; decades of intensive cultivation and expansion onto marginal land has degraded the soil quality and left smallholders less resilient to both climate change and vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of coffee. As a result, many smallholders are in a negative spiral of declining yields leading to the increasing application of inputs to compensate, which is further reducing their already limited margins.

For the world to meet the net zero targets, the future global investment in NbS needs to increase four-fold by 2050, equating to an annual investment of more than $536 billion, with G20 countries investments making up approximately 40% of this total global investment.

Pastures for livestock production account for over 20% of the national territory of Costa Rica. Low levels of productivity of livestock producers with low climate performance has made salient the need for transition towards a more sustainable climate-smart sector.

A total investment in nature of USD 8.1 trillion is required between now and 2050 to tackle the triple planetary crisis

To meet current climate change, biodiversity and land degradation targets annual investments in NbS need to triple by 2030

The world needs to invest smarter by reimagining, recreating and restoring

An extensive directory to help harmonise monitoring and reporting across a range of environmental and social impact areas: biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, forest protection, and sustainable livelihoods.

Explore pathways to unlock the true potential of nature-based solutions by making nature a business and investment case

The 1-billion-dollar AGRI3 Fund is tackling the triangular challenge of preventing deforestation and stimulating reforestation, contributing to sustainable agriculture production, and improving rural livelihoods.

The Tropical Landscapes Finance Facility aims to help Indonesia promote economic development while contributing to achieving its climate targets as stated in its 'Intended Nationally Determined Contribution'.

Sustainable agricultural and forestry practices are necessary to prevent the climate crisis and relieve the growing strain the strain on land and resources to feed a growing world population

The Restoration Facility supports early-stage development of forest restoration projects in developing countries, contributing to climate adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity, and sustainable livelihoods.

Forests and agriculture hold more than 30% of the solution to the climate crisis but receive less than 3% of climate finance

The report attempts to capture the complete amount and future need for G20 country spending on nature-based solutions assets and activities. It calls for G20 countries to scale-up annual nature-based solutions spending to USD 285 billion by 2050 to tackle the inter-related nature, climate, and land degradation crises.

The scaling up of private capital for nature-based solutions is one of the central challenges of the next few years in the path to close the USD 4.1 trillion finance gap between now and 2050

By taking profits of nature-based solutions, we can vastly improve human well-being and prosperity. It’s time to scale up action and investments.

This joint FAO-UNDP-UNEP report calls for governments to rethink the way agriculture is subsidized and supported. The majority (87%) of $540 billion of support to agricultural producers is either price distorting or harmful to nature and health. Repurposing this support can help transform food systems and achieve the SDGs.

The State of Finance for Nature annual report tracks global trends in public and private investment in nature-based solutions, aiming to improve data quality and identify opportunities for governments, businesses and financiers