Degradation of our natural ecosystems poses a significant risk to our financial and economic stability. A significant portion of our global economic product relies on nature and natural systems. As human activity and climate change continue to deplete these systems, we need to create a regulatory agenda to better manage nature-related risks and the harms they can create. This paper offers up next steps for this regulatory agenda, specifically in the context of Africa, illustrating the urgency to do so for African economies, why transparency should be an important component of any regulatory agenda, and what African regulators can do to support stable nature-positive economies.
Regulators are increasingly establishing global financial initiatives to respond to naturerelated risks. In this section, we outline the case for regulators to act on nature risks because doing so assists their core mandate to maintain financial stability, and the particular urgency for African regulators to do so.
The World Economic Forum estimates that $44 trillion of global economic value generation, corresponding to more than half of the world’s GDP, is generated by industries that both depend on nature, while also impacting nature through economic activity1.