MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE FOR A NATURE ECONOMY

The report identifies 23 financial transaction mechanisms and 35 enabling frameworks aimed at protecting and restoring nature. It categorizes these mechanisms into fiscal interventions, regulatory instruments, new government-enabled markets, traditional market-based instruments, and hybrid mechanisms. The authors argue that while innovation is high in identifying revenue streams, most mechanisms lack scale due to a reliance on public funding, a need for high private-value-capture potential, and a lack of performance certainty for large capital providers.

• There is a significant imbalance between global biodiversity finance and spending on activities that harm biodiversity. Global biodiversity finance is estimated at US$ 78–91 billion per year, while harmful agricultural, forestry, and fishery subsidies are substantially higher.
• The report identifies five categories of financial transaction mechanisms to assign monetary value to nature: fiscal interventions, regulatory instruments, new government-enabled markets, traditional market-based instruments (including financial markets), and hybrid mechanisms.
• Financial viability for nature-based projects is more easily achieved when there is high potential for private value capture, meaning benefits can be easily monetised for a narrow set of beneficiaries. Most conservation projects do not fit this category.
• Public and philanthropic funding remain the dominant sources for financing nature-based projects, which creates a bottleneck for scaling as public budgets are strained by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Most nature-based financial instruments have not been implemented at scale, with some, such as resilience bonds, still in the pilot stage. This is attributed to a lack of a proven track record and uncertainty regarding performance under climate change.
• Technical impediments to scaling biodiversity finance include the absence of a single unit of measurement for biodiversity (unlike CO2 for climate change), the need for highly localised small-scale projects, and the difficulty of modelling complex ecosystem interactions.
• The report lists various enabling frameworks that support transaction mechanisms, including ecosystem accounting frameworks (e.g., SEEA, TEEB, WAVES), valuation methodologies (e.g., InVEST, ENCORE), and data sources (e.g., GBIF, Global Forest Watch).

APA

Rendlen, B., & Uzsoki, D. (2021). MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE FOR A NATURE ECONOMY. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2024-06/mapping-the-landscape-for-a-nature-economy-luc-hoffmann.pdf

Chicago

Rendlen, Britta, and David Uzsoki. MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE FOR A NATURE ECONOMY. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2021. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2024-06/mapping-the-landscape-for-a-nature-economy-luc-hoffmann.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Rendlen |first1=Britta |last2=Uzsoki |first2=David |title=MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE FOR A NATURE ECONOMY |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=2021 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2024-06/mapping-the-landscape-for-a-nature-economy-luc-hoffmann.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rendlen2021mapping, author = {Rendlen, Britta and Uzsoki, David}, title = {{MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE FOR A NATURE ECONOMY}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2021}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2024-06/mapping-the-landscape-for-a-nature-economy-luc-hoffmann.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }