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Global Financial Flows Must Change
According to the UNEP analysis, the bulk of nature‑negative finance — US$4.9 trillion — originates in private investments across energy, utilities, industrials and basic materials, while governments contribute another US$2.4 trillion through harmful subsidies in fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, transport, construction and water use. Together, these flows shape food systems globally, pushing agriculture toward monocultures, external inputs and extraction.
Our mission is built on a different foundation: local biodiversity, ecological knowledge, cultural identity and small-scale economies. Every project in our network illustrates what it looks like to work with nature rather than against it — and how drastically global financial flows must change if we are to preserve these systems.
In Kenya, for example, the Slow Food Gardens in Africa program supports communities in cultivating agroecological school and community gardens. These spaces teach children to grow drought-resistant traditional crops, a lifeline in a time of increasingly unpredictable rainfall. With the right support, these gardens become hubs of biodiversity restoration and food education. Yet the UN report shows that Africa experienced a 76% collapse in investments in nature-based solutions in 2023, meaning programs like this are left to survive on minimal resources, while industrial actors receive billions.
Across the Atlantic in Brazil, Slow Food Indigenous Peoples communities protect centuries-old agroforestry systems in the Amazon. These systems cultivate cassava, fruit trees, medicinal plants and wild foods in a regenerative mosaic that mirrors the forest’s own ecology. And yet this kind of ecological stewardship is overshadowed by the massive expansion of industrial commodity chains financed by nature-negative capital — a global imbalance that UNEP quantifies with its trillion-dollar figures. The money that accelerates deforestation is part of the same trillions of dollars that the report identifies as actively eroding ecosystems.
In Europe, celebrated for its landscapes and food cultures, Slow Food Presidia are fighting to keep traditional systems alive. In the Italian Alps, herders who practice transhumant grazing preserve mountain biodiversity and protect alpine meadows. Their work enhances pollinator habitats and maintains resilient ecosystems in the face of warming temperatures. Yet the UN’s data makes clear that these low-impact, biodiversity-positive systems exist in the shadows of heavily subsidized industrial models. When harmful subsidies shape what kinds of food systems thrive, even centuries-old ecological practices struggle to remain viable.
Meaningful Change Is Already Happening — But On a Financial Shoestring
The report also confirms that the world has yet to grasp the importance of scaling up nature friendly solutions: Nearly 90% of all nature-based-solutions finance comes from public sources, and private investment lags far behind at 10%. This imbalance mirrors what we see everywhere: those restoring soils, forests or coastal ecosystems rarely attract investors, whereas those disrupting ecosystems are heavily capitalized.
UNEP argues that nature-based solutions funding must reach US$571 billion per year by 2030, roughly 0.5% of global GDP. To anyone working in community-led food and biodiversity projects, this figure feels not only realistic but profoundly overdue. Slow Food’s Indigenous Peoples network, its Presidia safeguarding endangered foods, its Earth Markets connecting small-scale producers to consumers, and its youth-led food education initiatives all demonstrate that meaningful change is already happening — but on a financial shoestring.
Regional disparities deepen the challenge. In Africa and Oceania, the communities most in need of climate resilience are receiving the least support. This is particularly troubling. Africa is home to an astonishing wealth of crop varieties, livestock breeds, culinary traditions and Indigenous farming techniques — exactly the resources the world will need to adapt to climate breakdown. Yet these are the very regions where nature-positive finance is evaporating, as the UN report clearly shows.
Global Leaders Must Invest in People
UNEP’s proposed Nature Transition X‑Curve — a framework to rapidly phase out nature-negative finance while scaling up restoration and regeneration — echoes the principles we have championed for more than three decades. But financial tools alone cannot deliver the transition. They must be paired with the political vision of community-led models that understand food as culture, ecology and identity, not merely as a commodity.
If global leaders truly want to reverse the thirty-to-one imbalance, they must invest in the people who already steward biodiversity: the women who safeguard seeds in West Africa; the Andean farmers who grow dozens of native potato varieties; the fisherfolk in the Philippines restoring coral reefs; the pastoralists in Mongolia maintaining grassland ecosystems; and the young agroecologists revitalizing rural economies through small-scale, regenerative farming.
The UN report quantifies the crisis. Slow Food communities live its consequences and embody its solutions. What the world must now recognize is that redirecting even a small portion of the money currently spent degrading nature would transform thousands of such projects overnight. The choice is no longer technical, nor even financial. It is moral, cultural and political.
If humanity is serious about building a future where food is good, clean and fair for all, then the shift UNEP calls for must begin by valuing — and funding — the people and practices that keep biodiversity alive. The future of food, and the future of nature, are not parallel challenges. They are the same challenge. And the global Slow Food community is already showing what the path forward could look like if the world were to choose to invest in favor of the many rather than the privileged few driven by greed.