As global leaders from governments, business, finance, and NGOs gather in Egypt for COP27, it is under the cloud of recent estimates from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that – even with the worldwide climate pledges made at COP26 – we are heading towards a planetary temperature rise of between 2.4°C and 2.6°C by 2100.  

We have to increase our ambition. We have to turn pledges into on-the-ground investments.  And we have to be more strategic about immediate solutions. That means ensuring nature, and investment at scale into nature’s restoration and protection, are embedded in discussions happening in Sharm El-Sheikh. There is no way to keep the 1.5°C ambition alive without stopping and reversing deforestation, transforming our food and land use systems, and protecting ocean ecosystems. More than 30% of the climate mitigation that is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement can come from nature-based solutions. 

But, if the world is to meet its climate change, biodiversity, and land degradation targets, it needs to close a $4.1 trillion financing gap for nature by 2050. There is no time to lose. 

In October, the Green Finance Institute and UNEP came together with this mission in mind, partnering on a COP27 Special Series of the Financing Nature podcast. Over five episodes we have spoken with global experts and local delivery partners to hear what we need from governments at COP27 to close this gap, and to showcase the crucial role private sector investment can play. 

As the series concludes and the Conference gets underway, our guests have left us with clear messages:

3. There is a strong connection between economic growth, resilience, and nature

On the flip side to the previous point, connecting conservation, economic growth and resilience provides an opportunity that is crucial for us to remember. Guests expressed their concerns that previous ambition will be weakened at COP27 because of pressures on governments to address accelerating fuel costs and domestic cost of living crises. At COP26, nearly 200 countries agreed to upgrade their climate pledges by this year’s conference – yet only around two dozen have done so. It is therefore vital we understand that nature supports a thriving economy.

Kaddu Sebunya at the African Wildlife Foundation shared new models in Rwanda and Tanzania that have created win-win situations for local economies and conservation resulting in the expansion of a national park and mountain gorilla population and the development of schools, roads, hospitals, and housing. Yabanex Batista at the Global Coral Reef Fund shared the expanded opportunities for fishing communities from reef restoration in Mexico. 

We were also reminded in this series how nature investments can reduce infrastructure costs. As an example, it’s about 50 times more cost effective over 15 years to protect a coral reef or a mangrove, than it is to build a seawall.

UNEP’s Susan Gardner shared that it is now time to look closely at our reliance on systems of national accounting, like GDP, that don’t include any measure of the impacts of activities on nature, and that don’t recognize the dependencies of our economies on nature, nor the economic costs of collapse of nature and ecosystem services.