The interlinked crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are slipping down political agendas just as geopolitical instability and fiscal pressures rise. Overseas development aid is falling in real terms, and many megadiverse countries are juggling debt stress that pushes conservation to the margins. Meanwhile, the global biodiversity finance gap remains vast, estimated at roughly $700 billion a year by The Nature Conservancy’s 2025 analysis. This shortfall has invited a new family of instruments that promise to pay for measurable results. Beyond classic green bonds, we’re seeing biodiversity-linked bonds (BLBs), outcome bonds, and debt-for-nature swaps. However, this shift is controversial. Critics argue that such tools cannot work because nature is too complex to be commodified. Furthermore, a new perspective published in Nature Ecology & Evolution warns that without rigorous design, nature markets risk providing “cheap” talk instead of real conservation, potentially rewarding countries for outcomes that would have happened anyway. Social and political safeguards — not just clever finance — will decide whether these financial instruments can really help people and nature. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect instruments while ecosystems unravel, but we can insist on better, more integral ones. Biodiversity-linked bonds and debt-for-nature swaps should scale only when they follow the five essential fixes below. Macaws in Peru. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay. Why the hype and the caution? Three selling points explain the momentum for biodiversity bonds. First is scale: the cumulative labeled sustainable bond market reached $6.2 trillion in value in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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