Sustainable Finance

Sustainable finance is essential to support and scale ecosystem restoration. ERIP supports innovative financial mechanisms—like Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), blended finance, and community-driven businesses that channel long-term investment into nature-positive outcomes. These approaches ensure restoration efforts are economically and socially viable across the 20 participating countries.

Photo credit: © Conservation International/photo by Erickson Tabayag

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Why Sustainable Finance Matters

Restoring ecosystems requires long-term financial commitment. Without sustainable finance, restoration efforts often stall after initial implementation. By mobilizing diverse funding sources and making restoration investable, we can ensure long-lasting impact for people and nature - aligning financial flows with climate, biodiversity and development targets.  

Photo credit: © Joshua Trujillo, Starbucks

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ERIP’s role & strategy

ERIP helps countries address sustainable financing through technical support, capacity building and innovation. This includes providing guidance to design and pilot financial mechanisms such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and developing a Restoration Calculator to estimate the costs and benefits of different restoration approaches across ecosystems. Through knowledge sharing and technical assistance, ERIP strengthens countries’ ability to fund restoration beyond the life of the program. 

Photo credit: © Conservation International/photo by Russell A. Mittermeier

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Our Vision for Success

  • Development and piloting of diverse financial mechanisms for restoration across the 20 countries
  • Building financial and innovation capacities with decision-support tools like the Restoration Calculator.
  • Aligning restoration finance plans with national development and climate goals
  • Long-term funding secured to support and scale restoration  

Photo credit: © Cristina Mittermeier

Looking Ahead

The program promotes sustainable finance and the development of financial mechanisms to attract diverse funding sources, de-risk investments, and incentivize private sector engagement. Financial mechanisms are designed to be inclusive, ensuring that restoration investments benefit those most affected by ecosystem degradation. 

Decision-support tools like the Restoration Calculator aim to help countries assess the viability and impact of different restoration strategies. These innovations aim to strengthen national capacities, align restoration finance with policy frameworks, and scale up nature-positive investments globally.  By doing so, ERIP supports a shift from short-term project cycles to enduring financial resilience. 

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Resources

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    Guidelines

    Guidance on other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs)

    The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, provides a framework for the effective implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) through four goals and 23 targets. Target 3 (known as the ‘30x30 target’) calls on Parties to conserve at least 30% of terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine areas by 2030. These guidelines are designed to promote good practices relating to identifying, reporting, monitoring and strengthening OECMs. They are intended for use by a wide range of rightsholders and stakeholders to promote understanding of whether a site meets the CBD criteria for identifying an OECM, how to report OECM data at the national and global levels, and how to monitor and strengthen OECMs.

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    IUCN WCPA Technical Note No. 23: Integrating Justice into Restoration Practice

    Technical note aiming to provide evidence-based guidance for deepening the incorporation of social justice objectives into restoration projects, including those located in and around protected and conserved areas. In particular, there is strong evidence that highly inclusive and respectful practices - especially those involving local leadership - lead to better ecological and social outcomes. This technical note aims to bridge that gap by summarising lessons learned about promoting just restoration and highlighting opportunities and tools to facilitate these efforts.

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