Nature is the foundation of our economies, societies, and planetary health. More than half of global GDP moderately or heavily depends on healthy ecosystems, making the protection and restoration of natural capital essential for remaining within planetary boundaries and ensuring economic resilience.
Banks and insurers, as well as their clients and customers, are increasingly exposed to the impacts of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. UNEP FI’s role is to enable financial institutions to strengthen the resilience of their own businesses and engage clients to adapt practices towards a nature‑positive economy.
The Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) and Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) provide banks and insurers with the strategic framework for embedding sustainability at the core of their business strategies. UNEP FI’s nature work equips PRB and PSI signatories with the scientific insight, guidance and tools needed to integrate nature at the heart of financial decision-making. By connecting science, policy and finance, UNEP FI strengthens the institutional capacity of banks and insurers to better understand and manage nature-related risks and opportunities.
Through engagement with regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders such as standard setters, UNEP FI helps build the enabling environment needed for finance to act as a powerful catalyst for nature. As part of this work, UNEP FI actively contributes to the implementation of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and supports the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on finance sector outreach and ambition setting.
