Environmental risks, including extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, dominate the ten-year horizon in the World Economic Forumʼs latest Global Risks Report. And despite politicised private sector flight from ESG and climate action, particularly in North America, they represent growing and unavoidable material risks for asset owners whose impacts may dwarf any fallout from the geopolitical challenges facing today’s rules-based order.

In June, BBVA Colombia, the International Finance Corporation, and BID Invest launched the world’s first biodiversity bond securing $70 million for conservation and economic development. It is an initiative that could inspire similar instruments elsewhere that also attract investors seeking both environmental and financial gain. And governments, companies, and financial institutions gathering at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Conference of the Parties (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, should strongly encourage this trend.

En vísperas del Día de las Finanzas durante la COP16, Sandra Valenzuela, CEO de WWF Colombia, y Aaron Vermeulen, Líder de la Práctica Financiera Global de WWF Internacional, sostienen que desbloquear la inversión privada para la naturaleza que propicie una rentabilidad es la mejor solución a la doble crisis del clima y la naturaleza.

As a young child, I went to a Montessori school where children engage in free play and choose how to spend their time. One of my earliest memories from there is of one day playing with a group of girls, and for whatever reason, deciding to exclude another girl from our play circle. I can still remember the look on her face. I didn’t realize the significance of that moment at the time, but so much of my motivation today comes from the belief that people should not be left out, especially when it comes to matters as critical as health and well-being.

We live in a global economy that relies on nature. Whether or not we prosper in one depends on tackling the climate crisis and financing a global economy that works with nature rather than against it. Global exchanges have a critical role to play - by securing robust taxonomies, nature-related disclosures and transition plans that drive sustainable finance and the integration of nature in investor decision-making.

As global leaders gather for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos under a rallying cry of ‘Rebuilding Trust’, David Bloch, WWF’s Director of Global Corporate Engagement, argues that delivering on global climate and nature goals is a business opportunity too important to ignore. In many countries, economic uncertainty, inequality, and anxiety about climate change, conflict and shortages have brought trust in government to an all-time low. For business, for now, reserves of this most precious of currencies appear to be robust - but they cannot be taken for granted. With trust comes expectation and responsibility, which makes doing nothing unwise, especially in the face of growing societal polarisation and division.

We cannot limit global heating to 1.5°C nor protect people and communities vulnerable to climate impacts without investment in nature-based solutions. And with current global efforts to tackle climate change woefully inadequate, and COP28 our last chance to secure a 1.5°C future, governments and development banks must ignite private sector investment in nature. There are compelling reasons why they should do this through rapidly scaling blended finance - the strategic use of public finance to mobilize additional private investment.

By developing green financial solutions, we promote the reallocation of capital to companies, projects, and activities that shape more sustainable practices across the real economy, that benefit people and communities, and that contribute to the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

On the eve of the recent Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, a quorum of the world’s most powerful and influential leaders called for a ‘green transition that leaves no one behind.’ Their open letter framed an important opportunity to unlock global finance for nature and climate action — but did the summit deliver?

Realizing the promise of the SDGs — prosperity for all on a healthy planet — relies on sustaining healthy ecosystems and their services, and resourcing and empowering the people and communities best-placed to safeguard them. Earth Day is a moment to celebrate life in all its breathtaking diversity. It’s also a painful reminder that we are failing in our collective responsibility to live in harmony with nature.

Eighteen months ago at COP26 in Glasgow, in the thick of the pandemic, ten leading multilateral development banks (MDBs) made a significant joint statement on nature, people and planet. Now is the time to deliver on these commitments — and to go further, by making unlocking and scaling finance for nature the raison d’être of long overdue MDB reforms. While there is broad consensus on the need for reform, shareholders at this week’s World Bank / IMF Spring Meetings have a clear opportunity to set its direction.

With a new landmark global agreement on nature directing governments to eliminate harmful subsidies, align financial flows with a nature-positive future, and require the private sector to disclose nature-related risks and opportunities, the smart money is on implementation and investment in nature. It may not be perfect but the long-anticipated Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed last month finally recognises the urgent need to address the neglected side of the dual climate and nature crisis. As António Guterres put it recently in Davos, we must “stop our self-defeating war on nature”. The GBF’s goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 finally provides the world with a lodestar for action on nature akin to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target for limiting global warming. And its implementation at national and sectoral level will require companies, financial institutions, and investors to act.

Nature is the next big sustainability frontier for business and finance. Almost every sector is exposed to nature-related risks in some way – either through suffering disruption to supply chains, markets, and society caused by environmental degradation, or through causing nature loss directly and losing finance and customers as a consequence. Worldwide, the potential collapse of ecosystem services such as pollination and timber threatens an annual decline in global GDP by 2030. This makes protecting and investing in nature an economic as well as a moral imperative.

A living Amazon is vital for global stability, not least because of its role in storing carbon and regulating global climate. It is also an ecosystem in grave peril. If there’s one place on the planet where we should prioritise the pursuit of equitable, net-zero, nature-positive business, revive cooperation in a fragmented world, and deliver on global climate and nature goals, it’s the Amazon.

Credible net-zero plans for financial institutions – why they matter and what they look like.

As the world gathers in Sharm El-Sheikh to focus on implementing the Paris Agreement, and soon after in Montreal to agree a new Global Biodiversity Framework, world leaders must scale investment in nature-based solutions and forge a new narrative of hope. Make no mistake, nature is unraveling, and climate and ecosystem breakdown are upon us. WWF’s Living Planet Report 2022 sets out the science. Global wildlife populations have plummeted by 69% on average since 1970, and unless we limit global heating to 1.5°C, climate change is likely to become the dominant cause of nature loss.

If quickly and smartly scaled, public and private investment in adaptation and nature-based solutions offer an off-ramp from the highway to climate hell and can drive equitable, net-zero and nature-positive outcomes. So, what do we need from Finance Day at COP27?

We need to reshape economic and financial systems so that we move away from a global economy based on the pursuit of indefinite production and consumption and toward sustainable management of the global commons. Financial institutions can start by factoring natural capital and climate- and nature-related risks into financial decision-making.

According to the World Economic Forum, around $44tn in annual economic value generation – over half of the world’s gross domestic product – is moderately or highly dependent on nature. In reality, nature powers all industry and enterprise and, as Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, has reminded us, our economies are embedded within nature.

In the midst of compound environmental, socioeconomic, and security crises, the United Nations General Assembly has the chance this month to make history — by recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This would not only fill a longstanding gap in the international human rights framework but, around the world, trigger greater pursuit of environmental action that delivers real benefits for people and the planet, and lays the foundations for lasting peace and prosperity.