The Guardian

July 15, 2021
Trillions of dollars poured into rescuing economies around the world from the Covid-19 crisis have been spent in ways that worsen the climate crisis and harm nature because governments have failed to fulfil promises of a “green recovery” from the pandemic.

Only about a tenth of the $17tn in bailouts provided by governments since the start of the pandemic was spent on activities that reduced greenhouse gas emissions or restored the natural world, according to analysis from Vivid Economics, published on Thursday.

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World Bank Blog

July 12, 2021
The rollout of vaccines globally, particularly as this effort picks up momentum, is spreading hope that countries will soon have control over the devastating health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries still, though, have a long path to travel for economic recovery. The pandemic has led to a deep global recession in which much economic activity has declined, including in the hard-hit tourism sector. In tourism-dependent economies in Africa and the Caribbean, for example, GDP is projected to shrink by 12 percent.

The economic toll is occurring at a time when biodiversity is imperiled, globally. The 2020 Living Planet Index reported a 68 percent average decline in birds, amphibians, mammals, fish, and reptiles since 1970; one-third of the world’s terrestrial, and two-thirds of its marine, protected areas are under threat from human impact. Protected areas are not only key to any global effort to conserve biodiversity, they are also crucial to address climate change and achieve sustainable development goals. Currently, 17 percent of land and 8 percent of the marine environment, world over, is protected. The proposed target for 2030 – to be negotiated at the CBD COP-15 in Kunming, China in the coming months -- is to expand this coverage to at least 30 percent, part of an effort to address the threat to biodiversity.

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Reuters

April 8, 2021
Green debt swaps have the potential to spur accelerated action on climate change in developing countries, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, pledging to present an option for such instruments by November.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said it made sense to address the dual climate and debt crises at the same time, and IMF members on Thursday had strongly backed the Fund taking a bigger role on the issue of climate risk.

“When we are faced with this dual crisis - the debt pressures on countries and the climate crisis, to which many low-income countries are highly, highly vulnerable - it makes sense to seek this unity of purpose,” Georgieva said.

“In other words, green debt swaps have the potential to contribute to climate finance. They have the potential to facilitate accelerated action in developing countries,” she told reporters after a meeting of the IMF’s steering committee.

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The New York Times

April 7, 2021
How does a country deal with climate disasters when it’s drowning in debt? Not very well, it turns out. Especially not when a pandemic clobbers its economy.

Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt.

They owe staggering amounts of money to various foreign lenders. They face staggering climate risks, too. And now, with the coronavirus pandemic pummeling their economies, there is a growing recognition that their debt obligations stand in the way of meeting the immediate needs of their people — not to mention the investments required to protect them from climate disasters.

The combination of debt, climate change and environmental degradation “represents a systemic risk to the global economy that may trigger a cycle that depresses revenues, increases spending and exacerbates climate and nature vulnerabilities,” according to a new assessment by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others, which was seen by The Times. It comes after months of pressure from academics and advocates for lenders to address this problem.

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Campaign For Nature

March 22, 2021

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new report that--for the first time--provides conclusive evidence that investments in renewable energy and biodiversity conservation do more to boost a country’s GDP than investments in fossil fuels and activities that destroy ecosystems. The findings laid out in the IMF Working Paper, Building Back Better: How Big Are Green Spending Multipliers?, are based on a new international dataset that is the first to gather and compare the impacts on GDP of spending on green and non-eco-friendly energy and land use.

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UNEP

March 10, 2021
One year from the onset of the pandemic, recovery spending has fallen short of nations’ commitments to build back more sustainably. An analysis of spending by leading economies, led by Oxford’s Economic Recovery Project and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), finds only 18.0% of announced recovery spending can be considered ‘green.’

The report, Are We Building Back Better? Evidence from 2020 and Pathways for Inclusive Green Recovery Spending, calls for governments to invest more sustainably and tackle inequalities as they stimulate growth in the wake of the devastation wrought by the pandemic.

The most comprehensive analysis of COVID-19-related fiscal rescue and recovery efforts by 50 leading economies so far, the report reveals that only $368bn of $14.6tn COVID-induced spending (rescue and recovery) in 2020 was green.

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UNEP

December 9, 2020
A green pandemic recovery could cut up to 25 per cent off predicted 2030 greenhouse gas emissions and bring the world closer to meeting the 2°C goal of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report finds.

UNEP’s annual Emissions Gap Report 2020 finds that, despite a dip in 2020 carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3°C this century.

However, if governments invest in climate action as part of pandemic recovery and solidify emerging net-zero commitments with strengthened pledges at the next climate meeting – taking place in Glasgow in November 2021 – they can bring emissions to levels broadly consistent with the 2°C goal.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

November 30, 2020

[…] As the world faces increasingly frequent and severe shocks - from the COVID-19 pandemic to extreme weather linked to climate change - it will need to re-evaluate its priorities, from a focus on efficiency to the value of interconnectedness, he said.

That might extend as far as fundamentally rethinking how key planetary life-support systems - such as the fast-disappearing Amazon rainforest - are governed as a global resource, said Rockstrom, an earth scientist and leading thinker on resilience.

“If the Amazon rainforest crashes, we will lose jobs in Germany,” he said.

“It will create so much havoc in the climate system” as temperature increases accelerate and rainfall shifts, he warned.

“When something unacceptable happens in one corner of the planet, it sends invoices across the whole world,” he added.

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Campaign for Nature

November 11, 2020
This week, leaders of 450 public development banks representing 10% of total global investment will gather to discuss the role public finance can play in driving sustainable development that benefits people and the planet. 

The Finance in Common Summit will underscore the role nature-positive public finance can play in establishing a healthy environment, critical to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Climate Agreement targets and the new, ambitious framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Central to this framework is a target to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. 

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Project Syndicate

November 11, 2020
Public development banks will be critical to global efforts to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout. To realize their potential, they should complement their climate investments by setting explicit nature-based goals and targets.

This week’s Finance in Common Summit will mark the first time that leaders of the world’s 450 public development banks (PDBs) come together to discuss how to reorient investments toward sustainable development. Given the current global economic uncertainty and compounding environmental threats, the gathering comes at a critical moment. It is a welcome opportunity to consider how public financial institutions can help steer funding toward conservation and sustainable use of natural resources – thus opening up an asset class that supports both people and the planet.

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Northglen News

October 13, 2020
World Economic Forum has drawn the attention of the global business community to the critical relationship that exists between nature conservation and the state of the world economy.

In a video message released today, research findings show that it would cost the world just $140 billion a year to protect 30% of the planet from destruction. That’s less than what the world spends each year on video games and less than a third of what governments spend on subsidizing activities that destroy nature. This is also a fraction of the $10 trillion that was spent on Covid-19 packages in the first two months of the pandemic.

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Forbes

October 6, 2020
There is no future for business as usual. Our current economic system, which arguably has succeeded in creating unprecedented economic output, wealth and human welfare over the past 70 years, has led to exacerbated social inequalities and loss of nature at an extent that threatens the stability of our economies and societies – and could maybe even lead to a collapse of civilisation as we know it.

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Independent.ie

August 19, 2020
The Earth is running a high fever, not only from the Covid-19 pandemic but from climate change. This summer, Svalbard experienced its highest-ever recorded temperatures, causing the Arctic archipelago's glaciers to shrink away into growing turquoise meltwaters. And night sweats from the heavy monsoons that pummelled the foothills of the Himalayas resulted in floods and the displacement of millions.

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Mongabay

July 23, 2020
As COVID-19 wreaks havoc on the world’s people and the global economy, a group of international researchers is looking to the future. Their ground-breaking work underscores the immense economic benefits of expanding global protected areas to include 30% of the world’s land and oceans in order to accelerate recovery from the pandemic.

The report, authored by more than 100 economists and environmentalists for the advocacy group Campaign for Nature and published earlier this month, claims to be the first analysis ever to measure the economic benefits and costs of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and seas. The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity included this 30% protected area goal as part of its ten-year conservation strategy which is expected to be ratified by 196 countries at an international summit in Kunming, China, next year.

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China Dialogue

July 20, 2020
Two major reports, by the World Economic Forum and the Campaign for Nature, describe the vast economic benefits of protecting and restoring the living world

Businesses that add value to nature instead of degrading and destroying it could tap into a $10.1 trillion opportunity which could create 395 million jobs by 2030.

This is the central finding of a major new analysis by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The report is the second of three from the forum’s New Nature Economy series, which aims to demonstrate the relevance of nature-loss to boardroom discussions on risks, opportunities and financing.

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