HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Damage control

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 – namely fossil fuels, agriculture, water, transport and construction.

“If you follow the money, you see the size of challenge ahead of us,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, in response to the report, contrasting the slow progress of nature-based solutions with harmful investments and subsidies which, she declared, are surging ahead.

“We can either invest in nature’s destruction or power its recovery – there is no middle ground.”

A wealth of solutions

As well as identifying the size of the imbalance, the report’s authors lay out a vision of a “big nature turnaround,” highlighting examples of solutions that both work, and are economically viable.

They include:

• greening urban areas to counter heat-island effects and improve liveability for citizens;
• embedding nature in road and energy infrastructure;
• Producing emissions-negative building materials.

The study also charts a path for phasing out harmful subsidies and destructive investment in systems of production and scaling up investments that are “nature-positive.”