Closing the Nature-Finance Gap

If you want to understand policy choices, it is said, “follow the money.” Inspired by that advice, we at The Nature Conservancy (in partnership with the Paulson Institute and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability) crunched the numbers to see what it would cost to preserve biodiversity – the variety and abundance of life on earth.

We found that while the world spends $124-143 billion per year (as of 2019) on economic activity that benefits nature, it spends much more on activities that damage it. Moreover, to protect and then begin to restore nature, we urgently need to close a $598-824 billion annual financing gap.