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Ocean Investment Protocol: A multi-stakeholder plan to enable funding for the Sustainable Ocean Economy

The Ocean Investment Protocol offers a framework for financial institutions, policy makers and industry leaders to lead this transition. First published in 2025, this updated edition reflects developments in the sustainable ocean finance landscape and highlights new priorities; including stronger action by central banks, regulators, and supervisors and better integration of ocean considerations into financial decision-making.

Asking Better Questions on Nature: For Bank Chief Risk Officers and Risk Committees

This guide helps risk professionals at banks gather the information they need to monitor and manage nature-related risks and opportunities across their portfolios. Structured around ten questions, the guide helps banks better understand their nature-related impacts, capabilities, and management practices – and turn that understanding into greater resilience and future opportunities. 

Circular Solutions to Achieve Nature Targets

This report provides commercial banks, particularly signatories to the Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB), with a practical framework for understanding how circular economy solutions can address nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities across three ecosystem categories: ocean and marine, freshwater, and terrestrial and land-based ecosystems.

Nature-based risk assessment: Integrating project-related finance

This guidance, co-developed with Equator Principles, supports project-related financing teams as well as risk professionals within financial institutions, particularly banks, by outlining how to conduct a nature-based risk assessment at the corporate, portfolio and project levels using existing frameworks and tools. It highlights how nature-based risk assessments can improve risk identification, strengthen due diligence, enhance collaboration with clients, and support better decision-making across project finance and portfolios.

Client Engagement on Nature: Prototype tool

Banks are increasingly talking to their clients about nature but knowing which questions to ask to understand the impact and reliance of their businesses on nature is not always clear. This prototype is an excel-based tool intended to assist banks—and specifically relationship managers—to formulate succinct, meaningful questions as part of client engagement on nature.

Nature Impact Target Setting for Banks

Co-authored by UNEP FI and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the new “Nature Impact Target Setting for Banks” discussion paper proposes an approach for banks to set impact targets for nature – targets that aim to achieve an improvement in the state of nature through a set reduction of pressures across a bank’s lending, investing, and underwriting activities.

Nature-related finance and Indigenous Peoples: Advancing equity to halt and reverse nature loss

UNEP FI’s latest briefing explores the critical connections between the financial sector, nature, and Indigenous Peoples, with insights drawn from discussions at the Finance & Biodiversity Pavilion during COP16 in Cali. The report highlights a major milestone: the establishment of a permanent Indigenous Peoples’ group under the Convention on Biological Diversity — a recognition of the vital role that Indigenous knowledge and leadership play in biodiversity conservation.