---
title: why the biodiversity funding gap does not close
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/why-the-biodiversity-funding-gap-does-not-close
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/why-the-biodiversity-funding-gap-does-not-close.md
subtitle: "three clocks, and none of them is the river's"
category: nature-finance
---

# why the biodiversity funding gap does not close

*three clocks, and none of them is the river's*

The **biodiversity funding gap** is the distance between what the world spends each year to keep nature working and what researchers estimate it would take to stop the decline. The best-known estimates put it in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Part of the gap is size: the money is not there. But a second reason sits underneath the size, and it is the one this post is about: most of the money that does arrive runs on someone else's clock, and the forest does not.

Picture a forested watershed above a town's water intake. It keeps the water clear through every dry season, holds the slope through every storm, and shades the stream every summer. It does not invoice on a fiscal year. That forest already exists, whether or not a budget, a foundation, or a fund writes a check. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is how that living thing gets an account addressed to it. It is not the forest, and it is not the watershed.

:::johnson
**the money arrives on three clocks. the forest keeps a fourth.**

A grant cycle, a budget year, and an exit date are all honest. None of them is the season the forest works on.

[read next: can an animal have a bank account →](/guide/can-an-animal-have-a-bank-account?from=guide)
:::

## what the biodiversity funding gap measures

There is more than one gap figure, and they answer different questions. Keep them apart.

In 2020, the Paulson Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and the Cornell Atkinson Center published *Financing Nature*. It estimated that global biodiversity finance flows were $124 billion to $143 billion a year in 2019. It estimated the need at $722 billion to $967 billion a year to reverse the decline by 2030. That leaves a gap of $598 billion to $824 billion a year, with an average of $711 billion.

On 24 September 2025, the Paulson Institute issued an interim update saying the gap "has grown from $711 billion in 2020 to $942 billion annually." That is an update to the 2020 figure. It is not a new full methodology.

The Convention on Biological Diversity works from a different frame. Goal D of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is discussed as a finance gap of $700 billion a year. Target 19 asks parties to mobilize at least $200 billion a year by 2030. The $200 billion is a mobilization target. It is not the size of the gap, and it is not the Paulson range.

| source | date | what it measures | figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paulson Institute, TNC, Cornell Atkinson | 2020 | Gap between 2019 flows and the need to reverse decline by 2030 | $598–824 billion a year, average $711 billion |
| Paulson Institute interim update | 24 Sept 2025 | The same gap, updated | $942 billion a year |
| CBD framework, Goal D | 2022 framework | Finance gap as discussed under the goal | $700 billion a year |
| CBD framework, Target 19 | 2022 framework | Money to mobilize by 2030 | At least $200 billion a year |

If you have read that nature faces "a $1 trillion gap," treat that as shorthand for this family of estimates. The dated figures above are the ones to cite.

## grants and budgets did the work

Most of what is protected today was paid for by public budgets and by philanthropy. Parks, reserves, easements, land purchases, ranger salaries, restoration crews, and the science that tells everyone else what is at stake. Where a forest still stands because someone bought it or a legislature funded its care, that money did exactly what it was meant to do.

None of this is an argument that a gift was the wrong kind. A grant that bought an easement bought the easement. A budget line that paid a fire crew paid the fire crew. The gap is not proof that funders failed. It is a measure of how much more there is to hold than any single kind of payer can hold alone.

So the useful question is not whether the money was good. It is what shape the money arrives in, and whether that shape fits the thing it is paying for.

## three clocks

Most of the money in the published flows arrives on one of three clocks.

**A grant cycle.** A foundation decides, funds a term, and reports. Renewal is a new decision, made by a board that also has other places in front of it. That is good governance. It means the next payment is never certain until someone votes for it.

**A budget year.** Public money is appropriated for a fiscal year. A legislature or council can renew it, grow it, or cut it, and it answers to voters on that schedule. That is accountability. It also means the forest is funded twelve months at a time.

**An exit date.** Private capital that comes in also needs a date when it can leave, with its money back. That is a fiduciary duty, not a flaw. Some living systems have a cash cycle that fits that date, and some do not. The difference between working nature and standing protection has [its own post](/guide/working-nature-is-not-the-same-uncorrelated-as-protection?from=guide), so this one will not repeat it.

Each clock belongs to the payer. Each one is right for the payer's job.

## the season of the living thing

Standing protection pays out on the season of the living thing. The forest keeps the water clear every dry season it is still standing. The slope holds every storm it is still rooted. The stream stays cool every summer the canopy is still there. Some of the work runs longer than any of the three clocks: a stand recovering from fire, a seedling that has to get past browse, a wetland that takes years to settle back into its old water.

That season is none of the three clocks. It is not a grant term, a fiscal year, or a fund life. When the payment stops on the payer's schedule, the forest is still working on its own. The gap that the reports measure is partly a gap in size and partly a gap in timing: money that arrives in blocks for something that delivers in seasons, without end.

This is why so much good work turns into a project. A project has a start date and an end date, and the forest has neither. The project ends, the report is filed, and wherever the work is ongoing care rather than a one-time purchase, the watershed is back on the question of who pays next season.

## a stronger case, the same clock

A great deal of effort goes into the case for nature: valuations, natural capital accounts, disclosure frameworks, studies of what a watershed is worth to a city. That work matters. It changes minds, and it changes which payer picks a place up next.

But a better argument is not a cash flow. A stronger valuation does not change the clock that the next dollar arrives on. It can make the grant more likely, the appropriation larger, or the deal more attractive. The dollar still comes on a grant cycle, a budget year, or an exit date.

## a payer on the forest's season

There is one kind of payer whose clock already matches the forest. It is the payer whose own condition depends on the place.

A water utility below that forest needs clean, steady water every dry season. If the forest goes, the utility pays for treatment, for sediment, for a new intake. Its need repeats on the same season the forest works on, so its payment can repeat on that season too. It is not paying for a report or a project. It is paying to keep a condition it would otherwise have to replace. That is an avoided cost.

This is not a new idea. Quito's water system has paid for the páramo above the city through FONAG since 2000; the [Quito series](/guide/what-quito-depends-on?from=guide) has that story. [Who pays for nature](/guide/who-pays-for-nature?from=guide) names other payers who already pay because the water is theirs.

Here is where the payment usually lands. The utility pays a program, a fund, a town, or a contractor. The payee is a person or an organization. The forest is the reason for the payment, and it is not on the receiving end of it.

An account addressed to the watershed, signed by named people, gives that repeating payment somewhere to land. The money is still the utility's money. Nothing about the account creates new money. What changes is that the payment is addressed to the place, it can repeat on the place's season, and it can sit on the payer's operating line next to the other things it pays every year to keep running. A person still decides, and a person still signs. An account is not legal personhood; [the voice and the land](/guide/the-voice-and-the-land?from=guide) covers that line. [A place and a purpose can hold an account](/guide/a-place-and-a-purpose-can-hold-an-account?from=guide) covers how the account works.

## what this does not promise

It does not promise that the gap closes because accounts exist. On 12 October 2026, the ensurance account catalog listed 2,085 active accounts, and 86 of them had a wallet deployed. There is no published account-to-account purchase to point to yet. The design is ahead of the example, and this post will not pretend otherwise.

It does not replace grants or budgets. A foundation can pay an account. A public program can pay an account. The account does not ask anyone to stop what is working. It adds a seat for a payer whose clock already fits the forest's.

And it does not turn protection into something to sell later. The benefit on the other side of the payment is the condition itself: water that does not have to be filtered, a slope that does not fail, habitat that is still there next season.

## where this leads

If the forest can have an account, the next question is whether an animal can. [Can an animal have a bank account](/guide/can-an-animal-have-a-bank-account?from=guide) takes that on, starting with what the law allows.

If you fund a forest or a watershed and your payment ends before its season does, or you run something whose own condition depends on a place and you would rather pay that place than a program, [talk to us](/contact?from=guide&topic=give-the-herd-the-account). Foundations can also see [how we work with philanthropy](/solutions/foundations?from=guide&topic=give-the-herd-the-account).

## sources

[Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap](https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/conservation/financing-nature-report/) — Deutz et al., Paulson Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, 2020. 2019 flows, the 2030 need, and the $598–824 billion gap range

[Paulson Institute press release, 24 September 2025](https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/press_release/paulson-institute-warns-global-biodiversity-crisis-is-worsening-while-financing-gap-surges/) — interim update: gap grown from $711 billion in 2020 to $942 billion a year

Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD/RM/AC/2024/1/2 — landscape note on resource mobilization, citing Goal D ($700 billion a year finance gap) and Target 19 (at least $200 billion a year by 2030) of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

## the series

1. [who pays for nature](/guide/who-pays-for-nature?from=guide)
2. [why the biodiversity funding gap does not close](/guide/why-the-biodiversity-funding-gap-does-not-close?from=guide)
3. [can an animal have a bank account](/guide/can-an-animal-have-a-bank-account?from=guide)
4. [what is the beneficiary pays principle](/guide/what-is-the-beneficiary-pays-principle?from=guide)
5. [what protocol owned liquidity can and cannot buy](/guide/what-protocol-owned-liquidity-can-and-cannot-buy?from=guide)