The price of a “business as usual” approach to climate and environment already amounts to billions of dollars per year, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published this Tuesday (9) in Nairobi, during the seventh United Nations Environment Assembly.
The report estimates that, on the current trajectory, climate change could reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by 4% by 2050 and 20% by the end of this century and that, on the contrary, investing in a stable climate, healthy nature and soils, and a pollution-free planet could add billions of dollars to global GDP, prevent millions of deaths and lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and hunger.
The report shows that the world is at a crossroads between continuing on the current path of climate change or changing direction to ensure a healthy planet, said UNEP Executive Director, Danish economist Inger Andersen. “It’s not even a choice.”
“My biggest fear is that we will become complacent,” Andersen says in an interview with DW. She adds that it will be the poorest who will suffer the most if nothing is done quickly enough.
Emissions of gases responsible for global warming hit new records in 2025, a year that is also expected to be the second hottest on record, after 2023, according to new data from the European Union (EU) Copernicus program.
The costs of doing nothing
Andersen says the new UNEP report, produced by 287 scientists from 82 countries, presents a roadmap for global action. According to the report’s scientists, the benefits of changing the world’s course include billions of dollars in additional GDP each year, as well as preventing millions of deaths and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and hunger.
The report says this will require coordinated action between governments, businesses and societies to accelerate the transition to sustainable agriculture, restore ecosystems, adopt clean energy, as well as design products and materials that last longer and reduce waste.
Andersen says the report reiterates the importance of limiting excessive use of important resources – such as land, water or energy – so that there is a “degree of generational justice towards our children and grandchildren”.
The authors highlight the need to change behaviors and abandon excessive consumption in many parts of the world, as well as transformations in the economic field, for example by not only focusing on GDP as a measure of wealth and also taking into account human and environmental well-being, in addition to gradually eliminating harmful subsidies, such as those for fossil fuels.
They say this could generate 20 trillion US dollars (108 trillion reais) in global economic benefits annually by 2070, a value that would then increase to 100 trillion US dollars per year.
An annual global investment of around US$8 trillion would be needed to help restore biodiversity and bring net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. This would be the time when remaining emissions in the atmosphere could be absorbed by nature or removed through technologies such as carbon capture.
This investment is high, but the price of doing nothing is much higher, according to the scientists cited in the report. Over the past 20 years, extreme weather events – such as floods, storms and wildfires – have caused an estimated $143 billion in losses.
In 2019, health damage caused by air pollution accounted for 6% of global GDP, or $8 trillion, and the resulting economic costs are expected to increase to between $18 trillion and $25 trillion by 2060, according to UNEP.
Mixed results in 2025
The report is published at the end of a year marked by mixed results on climate and environmental issues. “It was obviously a difficult year for multilateralism,” says Andersen. But she says she is optimistic about the results that cooperation between countries can achieve.
Although “countries are not acting fast enough” to reduce emissions, she believes progress has been made to avoid the sharp temperature increases predicted when nations came together in 2015 to sign the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming to 1.5°C.
But she was disappointed that the United Nations climate conference in Belém, COP30, failed to reach consensus on a transition path to eliminate the use of oil, coal and gas. Andersen says, however, that she is looking forward to the conference to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels, led by the Netherlands and Colombia and scheduled for April.
She says the climate convention is working. “But we need to speed up the process, otherwise we will have to pay a high price in terms of floods, fires, inundations, deaths from heat and drought and other problems.”
Reasons to be hopeful in 2026
Looking to the future, Andersen believes it is important for renewable energy to become competitive. She considers it “an interesting phenomenon” that wind and solar energy are now produced at a much lower cost than fossil fuels.
She cites the example of Texas, in the United States, which, despite being an oil-producing state, manages to obtain 40% of its electricity from renewable sources. “It’s interesting to see that markets are moving in a direction that is favorable to tackling the climate crisis,” says Andersen. For her, renewable energies are a sector “unstoppable due to prices and competitiveness”.
While she fears complacency, Andersen also says she feels motivated by a movement of disparate groups leading climate action — businesses, young activists, scientists and religious leaders — that she considers so powerful that it can no longer be stopped. “What gives me hope is that there are solutions and millions of people are asking for them.”
She hopes this will translate into political action. “I often say: Take your grandson or daughter or have a child’s dreams in mind when you walk into a voting booth and vote for them as well as your own interests. It’s a commitment each of us must make to those we love most in our lives.”
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