1399. Socio-Economic Impact of Investing in Planetary Health

Climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, pollution, and waste are causing enormous damage to the planet, people, and economies.

The Global Environment Outlook, Seventh Edition: A Future We Choose (GEO-7), released at the Seventh United Nations Environment Assembly held in Nairobi on December 9, 2025, found that investing in planetary health, including stabilizing the climate, conserving nature and land, and addressing pollution issues, could increase global GDP by trillions of dollars, save millions of lives, and lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and hunger.

The report outlines two transformational pathways: behavioral change to reduce reliance on material consumption, and technological development and increased efficiency. It predicts that the macroeconomic benefits of reduced exposure to climate risk, reduced biodiversity loss, and increased natural forest cover will begin to emerge in 2050, rapidly reaching US$20 trillion per year by 2070 and US$100 trillion per year thereafter. Additionally, measures such as reducing air pollution could avert 9 million premature deaths by 2050, and lift around 200 million people out of undernourishment and over 100 million out of extreme poverty by 2050.

Meanwhile, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and ensuring sufficient funding for biodiversity conservation and restoration would require annual investments of around US$8 trillion until 2050. However, the costs of doing nothing would be much higher.

The report identifies the need for fundamental changes in five key areas to achieve transformational change.

Economy and Finance: Moving beyond GDP to comprehensive wealth indicators, internalizing externalities, phasing out subsidies, taxes, and incentives that harm nature, and properly reusing funds.

Materials and Waste: Designing circular products, ensuring transparency and traceability of raw materials, shifting investments to circular and regenerative business models, and shifting consumption patterns to circular ones through mindset change.

Energy: Decarbonizing energy supplies, improving energy efficiency, ensuring social and environmental sustainability in critical mineral value chains, and addressing energy access and energy poverty.

Food Systems: Healthy Transitioning to sustainable diets, improving circularity and production efficiency, and reducing food loss and waste.

Environment: Accelerating biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and restoration, leveraging nature-based solutions, climate change adaptation and resilience, and climate change mitigation strategies.

The report calls on governments, nongovernmental organizations, multilateral organizations, the private sector, civil society, academia, professional organizations, the general public, and indigenous peoples to recognize the urgency of the global environmental crisis and collaborate in co-designing and implementing integrated policies, strategies, and actions to build on the progress achieved in recent decades and achieve a better future for all.

(References)
UNEP (2025). Global Environment Outlook 7: A future we choose – Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all. https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7

Contributor: Miyuki IIYAMA, Information Program