The destruction of our ecosystems may have far worse social and economic consequences than the current coronavirus pandemic; they are the invisible infrastructure to much of the EU’s employment and are in rapid decline.
EU leaders have an opportunity to protect citizens by enforcing environmental regulation, decreasing harmful subsidies and increasing private and public funding for nature. This report argues that the EU can do this by integrating environmental goals into its economic governance through the EU Green Deal. It discusses how private finance can be made to help businesses to transform their interactions with nature, via better information and incentives.
The report indicates that may be limits to the involvement of private finance, which has invested little in nature projects so far, and suggests ways to make funders pay more attention to nature projects within those limits. It also discusses methods to align and increase public funding. The report provides arguments and approaches that are directly relevant to the debate on shaping the Recovery Package, that the EU is tabling in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The report finishes by providing four main recommendations:
- Fully integrate and prioritise environmental objectives, including biodiversity, in the EU Semester.
- Review the EU’s system for tracking the impact of public budgets on nature and biodiversity.
- Mandate the Sustainable Finance Platform to develop a harmonised system of metrics and methodologies to assess the impacts, risks, and dependencies of economic and financial activities on biodiversity and nature.
- Assess the effectiveness and suitability of existing and new economic instruments against their environmental objectives.