It is easy to think that people and nature exist separately. The greatest threats to humanity come from crises that affect nature, including climate change, declining biodiversity and excessive pollution. We will not be able to solve any of them until we stop taking nature for granted and start investing more in it.

“Nature-positive” investment in conserving marine resources, sustainable land management, water supply and afforestation could deliver around 30% of the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5 °C – the target set out in the Paris climate agreement. What is more, such investment would not only improve our resilience to climate change, but also help to prevent future pandemics.

Ahead of the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16), held in Cali, Colombia, in October, we should remember that nature crises also pose structural risks to the global economy, to our shared prosperity and well-being, and to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Almost 55% of global GDP is highly or moderately dependent on nature.

At the Cali conference, delegates from 200 countries discussed how to accelerate action to protect 30% of the planet's land and marine areas by 2030, cut pollution and restore degraded ecosystems. One of the main obstacles to meeting these ambitious targets is funding. At present we not only invest too much in activities that harm nature and compound our problems, but we also invest only one third of what is needed to meet the 2030 targets on climate, biodiversity and land degradation.

Scaling up nature-positive investment

To scale up nature-positive investment, we need to do four things. First, we must build more effective public-private partnerships – between countries and national development banks, and with nature organisations, businesses and private-sector financial institutions. This would help to de-risk investment, prepare projects and deliver large-scale impact on climate, nature and inclusive economic development. Second, we must restore and mainstream regenerative practices and biodiversity management, particularly in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Third, we need common principles, standards and disclosure mechanisms to track nature-positive finance and its impact, and to disclose more about the impacts of companies and financial institutions on nature, their dependencies and their exposure to risk. Finally, nature must be taken into account across all policy areas when investment decisions are made, so that financial flows to activities harmful to nature can be redirected and reduced.

Multilateral development banks will have a key role to play in scaling up environmentally sound investment. Institutions such as the European Investment Bank are already increasing their support for the protection, restoration and sustainable use of nature, introducing common principles for tracking nature-positive finance. Such information is essential for assessing and integrating nature into the work of multilateral lenders, and for telling other investors what counts as a nature-positive investment. Partnerships and joint efforts to put these principles into practice are continuing.

At European level, the EIB works closely with the European Commission to support the worldwide implementation of the European Union's Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. We aim to ensure that all the projects we finance result in “no net loss” of biodiversity. We take biodiversity and ecosystem considerations into account across everything we do.

In addition, since one of the biggest challenges in scaling up nature-positive investment is structuring projects, we provide advisory services to help get nature restoration and biodiversity initiatives off the ground. In Morocco, the EIB provided advice and lent €100 million ($109 million) to conserve and restore more than 600,000 hectares of forest. In Côte d'Ivoire we are preparing to support sustainable cocoa growing, in which forests are conserved rather than felled. And to support marine conservation, we are working with partner institutions on the highly successful Clean Oceans Initiative, which has provided €4 billion ahead of schedule for projects to curb plastic waste.

Innovative financial instruments

Innovative financial instruments can help to mobilise more public and private funding for such investment. For example, the EIB-financed Land Degradation Neutrality Fund provides finance and technical assistance for sustainable agriculture and forestry around the world. The EcoEnterprises Fund supports biodiversity-friendly businesses in Latin America. The EIB is also considering making a new investment in a fund supporting afforestation, forest management and conservation projects on the continent. At COP16 we hope that initiatives like these will provide the basis for increased funding for nature protection.

We urgently need to reduce financial flows to activities that harm nature. Doing so is essential if we are to overcome the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

* Ambroise Fayolle is Vice-President of the European Investment Bank, responsible for climate action and environmental and development policy. He oversees the EU bank's operations in Africa, as well as in France and Germany.