ECB: Frank Elderson: Taking action for nature – investing in economic resilience and prosperity

The summary above is from the announcement ECB published on October 26, 2026.

What the announcement says

Keynote speech by Frank Elderson, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, at COP17 Finance and Biodiversity Day

It is a pleasure to open the Finance and Biodiversity Day at COP17.

The theme of this COP is “Taking Action for Nature’’.

We have talked about the need for action for long enough. Now we need to act.

Four years ago, the international community adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, setting out a pathway to living in harmony with nature by 2050.

The destination is set. The path is clear. But progress has remained limited. And nature has not stood still. It has continued to deteriorate. So we need to accelerate.

Tangible progress requires a shift from targets to implementation, from awareness to engagement, from ambition to investment.

COP17 must help us accelerate the journey. And finance has a central role to play. That should not come as a surprise: without investment, there can be no transition.

But we need to get the economics right. Protecting and restoring nature is not simply spending. It is investment: investment in the natural capital on which our economies depend, investment in resilience, and investment in our future prosperity.

That is why Finance and Biodiversity Day matters.

When ecosystems falter, the economy is at risk

Let me start with a fundamental question: why is nature so important to the economy?

We tend to think of roads, bridges and electricity grids as critical assets that serve as the foundation of a modern economy.

But there is another kind of infrastructure that we often take for granted: natural capital.

Nature provides services without which large parts of our economies could not function. Water keeps our factories and farms running, healthy soils sustain our food systems, forests and wetlands regulate droughts and floods, oceans absorb heat and carbon.

The World Bank estimates that as much as half of the world’s GDP relies on biodiversity, natural capital and ecosystem services.[1]

Our own analysis shows that 72% of companies in the euro area depend on at least one ecosystem service. And 75% of euro area corporate lending goes to companies that are highly dependent on at least one ecosystem service.[2]

The message is clear: nature is not peripheral to economic activity. It is fundamental to it.

But even as we speak, the foundations of our economies are being depleted at an alarming rate.[3] When ecosystems deteriorate, firms face higher costs, lower productivity and supply chain disruptions.

For far too long, we have treated nature as though it were free and inexhaustible. It is neither.

We have mistaken the depletion of natural capital for economic prosperity.

But we rarely – if ever – counted the soils depleted, the water systems stressed, the forests weakened or the ecosystems lost in producing it.

In economic terms, we have been consuming our capital and calling it income.

Nature is already presenting us with the bill. Depleted natural capital is already disrupting production, damaging supply chains and increasing costs. The consequences are already spreading from ecosystems to firms, from firms to balance sheets and from balance sheets into the financial system.

This is not a future tragedy on the horizon. It is an economic reality unfolding around us.

That is why taking action for nature is not only an environmental imperative.

It is an economic and financial necessity because our future prosperity directly depends on it.

The natural currency underwriting economic activity: water

ECB

Policy decisions and official commentary move currency and index pricing, and they shape the cost of holding a leveraged position.

Read the full announcement on ECB

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