Nature Finance Event: Stockholm+50

Held against the challenging backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, hiking food prices and a slowing renewable energy transition, the event acknowledged nature loss as a systemic risk to economic security and financial stability.

Keynotes and interventions were delivered by Taskforce members and partners -  Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Sylvie Lemmet, Deborah Lehr and Vian Sharif. Their collective interventions recognised the financial gap, highlighting the urgency and need to reshape existing markets to deliver nature positive and equitable outcomes.

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Highlights from Taskforce member and partner interventions can be found below:

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Valuing nature‍

Keynote 52:11 – 1:00:22

‍Excerpts from speech:

«  It is time to make sure that businesses, consumers, finance sector representatives and policy makers are recognising and responding to the systemic risks associated with the loss of nature.

Today we can make a contribution by setting out a vision, building blocks and key actions needed for financing a nature positive economy. Not a virtual economy with numbers on a screen. A real economy with thriving forests, vigorous watersheds, oceans, and healthy people. The discussion should aim to move beyond diagnostics or forecasts to action -  what is needed to develop a nature positive, climate resilient and just economy?…How can we ensure that indigenous and local communities are fully incorporated into the economic benefits from protecting nature.

Their knowledge and locally led partnerships are critical for successful implementation of emerging approaches to valuing and better managing vital natural assets. »

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‍How can we shift incentives in favor of a nature positive economy?

Panel intervention 2:51:42 - 2:54:07

‍Excerpts from response to the question 'Can you please tell us what the ‘Green Budget’ looks like?

‍« When we are talking about funding biodiversity, or climate for that matter, we are indeed talking about shifting an entire system.

‍…In terms of green budgeting, this is something that France has started to do together with OECD, and it consists of looking into our public finance - our public budget – and it is putting the finance minister at the center… it is very important to ‘green’ the finance minister themselves and apply a methodology that basically looks at every single expenditure before it goes to the parliament and rate them in terms of their impact on climate, and on biodiversity for that matter.  

…Of course, you don't get it right from day one, and we are refining the methodology as we go, and we are finding that very interesting because this is the only way to identify those expenditures that do not go the right way and try to shift them. »

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Financing the nature positive transition

Keynote 42:36 - 51:23  

Excerpts from speech:

‍« If we see what Gabon is doing and we see what many other countries are doing, we have a very compelling successful positive story to tell and we are really connecting the dots in terms of the system change.

… Let me go through the five good things that we need to understand: first, we need to go from negative and perverse incentives into positive ones.  

...The second thing that really worked very well, was to really understand that not only the market is failing, and there's a huge market failure that is unable to fully internalize the good and bad things that we do with nature - but also we got an institutional failure.  …We will never achieve our sustainability goals with the same institutional framework that in the first place has created the problem that we have to solve today. »

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The economic case for the protection and restoration of nature

Keynote 29:36 – 41:34

Excerpts from speech:

‍« It has been estimated that around USD 44 trillion – roughly half – of the global economy is highly or moderately dependent on nature or the services it provides.  Such estimates are helpful for demonstrating the scale of our reliance but of course, ultimately, all economic activity depends on clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and a habitable climate.

The loss of pollinators alone could lead to a drop in annual agricultural output of more than $200bn. Add the secondary service of pollinating non-food crops such as alfalfa, the main feed for cattle, and the impact rises to more than $500bn a year…  

Recent research has argued that the value of forests for their carbon sequestration role alone is well over US$ 100 trillion. …And for every benefit of biodiversity that we can measure, there are many more that we cannot. “. »

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Defining the path to financing nature recovery

Panel intervention 1:12:19- 1:15:01  

Excerpts from speech:

‍« Technology today means that we can achieve the sort of radical transparency we have never been able to achieve before. We're seeing unprecedented flows into environmental, social, and governance funds, some 53 trillion dollars worth of investment is being madewhere the decisions are being made using some kind of ESG metric.

We want to move that to 120 trillion dollars worth of investment capital - that's our global capital markets mainstreaming nature consideration, and that is possible because of all the data that we have available.

…Once we understand risk, businesses will want to offset that risk, mitigate that risk or at least be accountable to their investors who are asking them questions about how they're investing their money. Which means that we have an unprecedented opportunity - we're at the birth of a new asset class in nature markets. »

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Event Summary: Financing the Transition to a Nature Positive Future - Leaders Pledge for Nature

Press Release issued by Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and The Rt Hon Lord Goldsmith: Countries call for action to finance nature recovery ahead of COP15

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