Report: Funding that worsens climate change far outpace solutions
- $7 trillion are annually pumped into activities that fuel climate change
- About $5 billion of 'nature-negative finance' comes from the private sector
- Some lenders are now considering climate effects when they issue loans
FILE – Haze blankets the main business district in Jakarta, Indonesia, Aug. 11, 2023. The world’s corporations produce so much climate change pollution, it could eat up about 44% of their profits if they had to pay damages for what they spew, according to a study on Thursday, Aug. 24, by economists of nearly 15,000 public companies. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, File)
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(NewsNation) — About $7 trillion in public and private funds each year are invested in activities that fuel climate change, according to a United Nations report.
Those investments account for about 7% of the global GDP, according to the State of Finance of Nature report. That’s about 30 times the amount spent on nature-based solutions, the UN noted.
About $5 billion of what the UN called “nature-negative finance” come from the private sector. Almost half can be traced back to the construction, electric utilities, real estate, oil and gas, and food and tobacco industries, according to the report.
Alternatively, about 20% of the more than 700 financial institutions made net-zero commitments as part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance have taken steps toward deforestation — a major factor in achieving net-zero, according to Global Canopy, a non-profit that partnered with the UN to contribute to the report.
Vicki Hollub, CEO of U.S. oil and gas producer Occidental Petroleum, said during an ADIPEC oil and gas conference in October, that “in mitigating climate change, there is also the opportunity to continue to produce oil for our energy security,” according to a CNBC report at the time.
“We’re trying to work that strategy and I think it is going to work well,” Hollub said, according to CNBC. “The biggest challenge that is harder to address than even the innovation around technology is just getting people to trust our industry again and to understand what the data really says.”
Nature-based solutions, however, aren’t underfunded because there’s not enough money to go around, United Nations Environment Programme Nature for Climate Branch Mirey Atallah told UN News.
“It’s just that the money is going in the wrong direction,” she said.
To help “turn the tide,” Atallah said, some private financial institutions have begun considering climate effects when making decisions about issuing loans.