Three countries take on the $500 billion question: what if farm and fuel subsidies stopped harming nature?

Some of the money governments spend does quiet damage: subsidies that reward clearing rainforest, or discount the fertilisers and pesticides that wear out soil and water. At the UN nature conference in Yerevan, Armenia, Colombia and Finland have agreed to lead a new push — joined by France — to find that money and steer it somewhere better. Their group, the Friends of Target 18, will map out how countries can identify and redirect about $500 billion a year in nature-harming subsidies, working toward a goal the world has already agreed for 2030. The group will design the plan and help other countries do the same work. It is early days — no framework is signed yet — but the direction matters: instead of only finding new money to protect nature, governments are starting to move the much larger sums that currently work against it.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: policy reform