The Economic Case for Nature

“The Economic Case for Nature”, is part of a series of reports that lays out the economic rationale for investing in nature. Led by the Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy (ENB) Global Practice at the World Bank, the series aims to provide analytical insights to inform the process leading up to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and assist countries implement the new post-2020 global biodiversity framework. 

This report presents a first-of-its kind global integrated modeling exercise that demonstrates the economic importance of nature and helps the global community paint a landscape of possible scenarios of the interaction between nature’s services and the global economy to 2030. Recognizing that economies rely on ecosystem services and that loss of nature’s assets stems from economic decisions, this report presents a novel modeling framework that uses economic data to estimate how an economy might react to changes in selected ecosystem services. The model allows the study of the impact of changes in these ecosystem services—pollination, provision of timber and food from marine fisheries, and carbon sequestration by forests—on the global economy and vice versa between 2021 and 2030, to inform policy making