UNEP’s Report State of Finances for Nature 2026 : Harmful Investments Outpace Nature Protection by 30 to 1 In January 2026, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the 4th edition of the report titled ‘State of Finances for Nature : Nature in the Red – Powering the Trillion Dollar Nature Transition Economy’, based on global financial data from 2023, which highlights that for every USD 1 invested in protecting nature, roughly USD 30 is spent on activities that harm it.
Key Highlights:
Focus: This report presents the latest data and proposes a new approach to fast-track the transition away from nature-negative finance while scaling up investment in Nature-based Solutions (NbS).
Nature-negative spending: The report shows that in 2023, global spending on activities harmful to nature totaled around USD 7.3 trillion.

• Out of this amount, USD 4.9 Tn was contributed by the private sector, primarily concentrated in sectors such as energy, utilities, industrial manufacturing and basic materials. In 2024, this rose further to USD 5.5 Tn, increasing by 12%.

Triple Crisis: The resulting ratio of more than 30:1 in favour of nature-negative activities, the report warns, is fuelling the ‘triple planetary crisis’ of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
NbS Funding: Public and private finance for NbS reached USD 220 billion (Bn) in 2023, a 5 % increase from 2022.

• Public Finance of USD 197 Bn was the main source of NbS investment and private finance of USD 23.4 Bn remained comparatively limited.

Regional Trend: Regionally, Asia led government spending on NbS in 2023, with investments totaling USD 93 billion. North America recorded the largest Year-on-Year (YoY) increase in NbS spending, at more than 19%.
X- Curve: The report introduces the Nature Transition X-Curve, a new framework designed to help policymakers and businesses reform capital flows, sequence policy actions, and scale up high-integrity NbS across all sectors of the economy.