About
Nature is in crisis. Around the world, ecosystems are degraded, species are disappearing, and the natural systems that regulate our climate are under threat. International finance to protect and restore nature has never been more critical.
In 2021, ahead of hosting COP26 in Glasgow, the UK government made an ambitious commitment: £3 billion to protect and restore nature between 2021 and 2026, with £1.5 billion specifically for forests. This represented a step-change in the UK's climate finance ambitions.
But there was a problem: For the last five years no one could see where the money was going.
The Transparency Gap
Despite nature finance being one of the most popular categories of UK aid spending with the British public, tracking how this money is spent has been nearly impossible. The UK government:
- Stopped publishing consolidated project-level climate finance data in 2020
- Introduced no recurring public reporting when the nature commitment began in 2021
- Now only reports through UN frameworks with a two-year lag
This lack of transparency makes it difficult to:
- Hold government accountable for its commitments
- Understand which approaches to nature conservation are being prioritised
- Assess whether funding is reaching the most effective interventions
- Learn lessons and improve programme design
Our Mission
The UK International Nature Finance Tracker was created to fill this gap. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information requests, we provide the first comprehensive public analysis of UK nature finance spending since the commitment began.
Our goal is simple: to make UK international nature finance visible, understandable, and accountable.
What You'll Find Here
- Complete spending data for 2021-2025 across all government departments
- Programme-level breakdowns showing where money has actually gone
- Clear visualisations making complex finance flows easy to understand
- Analysis of trends including the shift from slow initial spending to recent acceleration
- Recommendations for improving transparency going forward
Who We Are
This tracker is a collaboration between Campaign for Nature and Conservation International UK, two organizations dedicated to protecting the natural world and ensuring conservation finance works effectively.
We believe that transparency is essential for effective nature finance. When spending is visible, it can be scrutinized, improved, and held to account. When it's hidden, opportunities for learning and improvement are lost.
Join the Conversation
The UK has made important commitments to international nature finance. Now we need to ensure those commitments are extended into the next five year budget period (ICF4, 2026-31) and translate into real, measurable outcomes for conservation.
This tracker is a starting point. We hope it will inform public debate, support civil society engagement, and ultimately lead to better, more transparent, more effective UK finance for nature.