This month’s sustainable finance article roundup examines a landscape increasingly shaped by geopolitics and climate risk, as near-term fragmentation, energy security, and affordability pressures collide with intensifying long-term threats from climate change, biodiversity loss, and water stress. The works featured analyse how these dynamics are reshaping capital allocation, disclosure, and resilience planning, demonstrating the growing need for sustainable finance to integrate geopolitical risk with real-economy transition.

The Planetary Health Check is an annual benchmark series providing a consistent, science-based assessment of the Earth system. It applies the Planetary Boundaries framework to monitor planetary stability, resilience, and life-support functions, supporting comparability over time and informing policy, finance, and strategic decision-making and Planetary Boundaries Science is a research lab within the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), focused on advancing scientific understanding of the planetary boundaries framework. It does not operate as an independent organisation and should be covered under PIK’s institutional profile.

This article introduces systems thinking and explains how it is reshaping sustainable and impact finance by addressing interconnected systemic risks like climate change and inequality. It outlines four emerging applications; from systemic risk management to systems-informed stewardship, highlighting the implications for investors’ roles, tools, and decision-making.

This UK national security assessment finds global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose high risks to food security, economic stability and geopolitics. Degradation is widespread, with potential ecosystem collapse from 2030–2050, intensifying migration, conflict, supply chain disruption and strategic competition without decisive intervention.

UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature 2026 finds global finance remains heavily skewed towards nature-negative activities. In 2023, US$7.3 trillion harmed nature versus US$220 billion for nature-based solutions. Meeting Rio Convention targets requires more than doubling nature investment by 2030.

NatureAlign is a decision-support tool by Nature Finance that helps financial institutions identify, assess and respond to nature-related risks and opportunities by aligning portfolios, strategies and governance with nature-positive outcomes.

Restor.eco is an open-data geospatial platform that maps and analyses global nature restoration and biodiversity projects, offering environmental datasets, impact tracking, funding opportunities and reporting tools to support transparent ecosystem restoration and conservation efforts worldwide.

Crowther Lab is a global ecology research group advancing understanding of climate, biodiversity and ecosystem restoration.Based at ETH Zurich, it produces high-impact scientific research, datasets and policy-relevant insights on forests, soils and nature-based solutions, supporting evidence-led environmental decision-making worldwide through collaboration with academic, public and international partners, globally recognised.

Restor is an open-access digital platform supporting ecosystem restoration and biodiversity monitoring worldwide. It integrates spatial data, science-based tools, and community networks to track restoration progress, assess ecological impact, and inform decision-making for practitioners, researchers, investors, and policymakers involved in nature and biodiversity outcomes across terrestrial and marine landscapes globally.

This white paper analyses how climate change and nature loss are widening insurance protection gaps in advanced economies. It outlines impacts on affordability and coverage, and recommends combining climate mitigation, nature-based solutions, and regulatory reforms to strengthen resilience and maintain insurability.

The WESR: Mediterranean MapX project provides geospatial data on environmental stressors and ecosystem risks across the Mediterranean region. It supports analysis of climate, biodiversity and resource pressures, offering spatial evidence to inform environmental risk assessment and sustainability considerations relevant to finance and investment decision-making.

WESR: Ocean provides high-level insights into ocean-related environmental risks and pressures, including marine ecosystems, pollution and resource use. It supports risk identification and contextual analysis for financial decision-making linked to ocean health, coastal exposure and sustainability considerations.

UN Biodiversity Lab’s Earth map is a free, online spatial data tool that lets users view and interact with over 400 global biodiversity, climate change and sustainable development map layers for analysis and planning. It supports visualising, downloading and combining datasets to inform conservation and policy decisions.

This MapX project is part of an open-source web platform for managing, analysing and visualising geospatial data. It enables interactive mapping of spatial datasets and statistics within themed projects, supporting environmental, resource and risk assessments through layered maps and related tools.

Drawing on Australia’s first national study of board-level engagement with nature, this article shows how directors are treating nature as a material governance and financial issue. It highlights how boards are extending climate governance systems to manage nature-related risks, adopt frameworks like TNFD, and build resilience and long-term value despite policy uncertainty.

UN Biodiversity Lab (UNBL) is a UN-supported platform providing spatial biodiversity and nature data for policy and decision-making.UNBL integrates global and national datasets, interactive maps and dashboards to support governments, researchers and organisations working on biodiversity conservation, land use planning and sustainable development.