Thirty to one: the most important ratio in the world economy

The world put US$220 billion into nature-based solutions in 2023. In the same year it put US$7.3 trillion into activities that directly degrade nature: US$4.9 trillion of private finance and US$2.4 trillion of public subsidies. That is more than thirty dollars against for every dollar for. UNEP published both numbers in January 2026 in its State of Finance for Nature report, and nothing else in nature finance matters as much as the distance between them.

What the number is made of

The against side is two flows. Private finance to activities that damage ecosystems accounts for US$4.9 trillion, and public subsidies that reward those activities account for US$2.4 trillion. Together they are US$7.3 trillion a year, or about US$231,000 a second, which is the rate at which the counter on our home page runs.

The for side is smaller in every way. Finance for nature-based solutions reached US$220 billion in 2023, up from US$200 billion, and its growth rate halved, from 11% to 5%. Nine-tenths of it, US$197 billion, is public money. The private sector, which controls most of the capital on earth, contributes US$23.4 billion, one dollar in ten.

The need is known too. UNEP's estimate is US$571 billion a year by 2030. Current flows are 38.5% of that, so the world has to increase them two and a half times in four years. The gap, US$351 billion a year, sounds enormous until it is set beside the other column: it is about two and a half weeks of the against side.

Why the ratio, not the gap, is the story

A gap invites a fundraising campaign. A ratio describes a direction of travel. Redirecting 5% of the finance that flows against nature, about US$365 billion a year, would close the gap entirely, with no new money at all. The Global Biodiversity Framework already asks for something like this: Target 18 commits governments to cutting harmful subsidies by at least US$500 billion a year by 2030, and Target 19 to mobilising US$200 billion a year for nature. Both targets are, in effect, instructions to move money from one column to the other.

That is why we treat thirty to one as the first number anyone in finance should know about nature. It says that the problem is not a shortage of capital. It is the price of capital's destination, and at the moment that price is zero.

The counter-argument, taken seriously

Most of the US$7.3 trillion is not villainy. It is farming, construction, mining, shipping and energy: the activities that feed and house people. You cannot switch them off, and nobody serious proposes to.

The point is narrower and harder. Half of world economic output, about US$44 trillion, is moderately or highly dependent on nature, on the pollinators, aquifers, soils and coastlines that these same activities draw down. Money flowing against nature is money flowing against the systems that a large part of the economy runs on, and none of it carries a price for what it consumes. That is a mispricing. Mispricings get corrected, either by markets when they finally see the number, or by events when they do not.

The dates

This year the correction has a calendar.

From 19 to 30 October 2026, at COP17 in Yerevan, the ISSB is expected to publish its exposure draft of a nature-related disclosure standard, built on the TNFD framework that 733 organisations with US$22.4 trillion under management have already adopted. Nature becomes a line item in the accounting standards that most of the world's listed companies report under.

On 30 December 2026, the EU's deforestation regulation applies to large and medium companies selling soy, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, beef, rubber or timber into Europe. Each shipment must be shown not to have cost a forest.

Between September and November, a strong El Niño peaks. The World Meteorological Organization expects drier than normal conditions across southern Africa and the Indian subcontinent. For companies that depend on rain in those places, the against side of the ratio arrives as a line in the next earnings release.

And in South Africa, where we work, one of the twenty largest listed companies has formally adopted the TNFD framework. No South African bank has. Nineteen of the twenty have not yet committed to the framework that will ask them which half of their business depends on nature, with the exposure draft weeks away and the final standard expected in 2027.

The decision

Thirty to one is a ratio of money, not of morals, and the market's own language is the right one to use about it. For every dollar spent protecting the systems the economy runs on, more than thirty are spent degrading them, and for the first time the degradation is about to be priced, by standard-setters, by regulators and by weather. Where a company sits on that ratio is a fact about its earnings. Starting at COP17, we will publish it, company by company.