Publications

The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’s Progress Report showed signatories are turning climate goals into measurable results. Portfolios are getting cleaner. Carbon intensity, measuring the emissions linked to every $1 million invested, fell from 61 to 50 tonnes in listed shares and from 73 to 50 tonnes in corporate bonds. Investment in climate solutions reached $787 billion in 2025, up from $555 billion two years earlier. Stewardship is stronger—engagement carried out through asset managers reached 103 percent of target levels.

Despite growing investment opportunities, private finance accounts for just 3–8% of reported climate adaptation finance. UNEP FI’s new white paper, Lost in Translation, examines how better information on physical climate risks, finance allocation, adaptation impact and financial performance can help unlock investment. The paper is accompanied by a policy brief outlining practical recommendations for governments and public and development financiers to improve information flows and mobilise private capital.

This companion to the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance is a voluntary, non-binding guide designed to help financial institutions, investors and corporate entities determine how to effectively channel capital towards adaptation and resilience-building activities. It was developed through a collaboration between the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMF), the ASEAN Taxonomy Board (ATB), the Sustainable Finance Institute Asia (SFIA), and UNEP FI, with financial support from the European Union.

Nature should be viewed as a form of critical infrastructure. This briefing explores how ecosystem condition shapes climate-related risks and introduces the PSI Climate–Nature Nexus Atlas, a practical resource to support nature-aware underwriting.

This sector brief helps banks to build a common understanding of the data centre and AI services sector across key departments, supporting with client engagement, high-level transaction screening, portfolio and risk analysis, and sector strategy and policy.

Prepared by the Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) and the UNDP Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF) for CBD COP17, this briefing explores how insurers can support implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework through risk management, risk transfer and investment, while highlighting priorities for scaling insurance for nature and strengthening resilience through healthy ecosystems.

In the two years since COP16 in Cali, Colombia, the finance sector has made significant progress in building the foundations for nature finance. Yet financial flows remain fundamentally misaligned with global biodiversity goals. UNEP FI's 2026 report card finds that stronger action by financial institutions, alongside clearer government policies and regulations, is needed to meet the 2030 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. 

This report provides guidance for banks on engaging with policymakers and industry stakeholders to accelerate the decarbonization of the cement sector, a hard-to-abate industry.  Concrete is essential to modern construction and the cement it contains constitutes one of the world’s most emissions-intensive industries. Achieving low-carbon cement will require a combination of breakthrough technologies, material innovation and an enabling policy environment. As demand for cement continues to grow in many emerging economies, accelerating the sector’s transition is increasingly urgent.

This UNEP FI policy brief examines how nature-related considerations are being incorporated into banking-relevant regulation across the two major economic and financial systems of China and the European Union. It aims to help financial sector practitioners and policymakers understand how nature-related considerations are being incorporated into banking-relevant regulation in the two jurisdictions, within a rapidly evolving global landscape.

The UNEP FI Risk Centre has developed a series of resources to help risk professionals at financial institutions better understand and use sustainability-related disclosures within prudential risk management. The series is anchored in the Conceptual Framework for Sustainability Risk Integration, which sets out seven core elements for embedding sustainability-related considerations into existing risk management processes.