{"id":255165,"date":"2026-01-28T02:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/255165\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T02:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:50:14","slug":"for-every-1-spent-protecting-nature-30-goes-to-destroying-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/255165\/","title":{"rendered":"For every $1 spent protecting nature, $30 goes to destroying it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The UN on Thursday issued a call for widespread financial reform as the most powerful way to shift global markets towards realising a better world, for people and the planet.<\/p>\n<p>For every dollar invested in protecting nature, 30 dollars are spent on destroying it\u00a0\u2013 that\u2019s the central finding of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.unep.org\/resources\/state-finance-nature-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">State of Finance for Nature 2026<\/a> report, which calls for a major policy shift towards scaling up solutions that help the natural world \u2013 and support the economy at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Damage control<\/p>\n<p>The data identifies several areas where the damage is particularly stark: utilities, industrials, energy and basic materials; and sectors which benefit from environmentally harmful subsidies \u2013 namely fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport and construction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you follow the money, you see the size of challenge ahead of us,\u201d said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unep.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UNEP<\/a>, in response to the report, contrasting the slow progress of nature-based solutions with harmful investments and subsidies which, she declared, are surging ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can either invest in nature\u2019s destruction or power its recovery \u2013 there is no middle ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A wealth of solutions<\/p>\n<p>As well as identifying the size of the imbalance, the report\u2019s authors lay out a vision of a \u201cbig nature turnaround,\u201d highlighting examples of solutions that both work, and are economically viable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They include:<\/p>\n<p>greening urban areas to counter heat-island effects and improve liveability for citizens;\u00a0embedding nature in road and energy infrastructure;\u00a0Producing emissions-negative building materials.<\/p>\n<p>The study also charts a path for phasing out harmful subsidies and destructive investment in systems of production and scaling up investments that are \u201cnature-positive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UN on Thursday issued a call for widespread financial reform as the most powerful way to shift&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-255165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}