Cloud forest assets financing a valuable nature-based solution

Most of the world’s cloud forests are concentrated in 25 developing countries. Of the more than 1,000 hydropower dams being planned across these tropical emerging markets in the pursuit of better access to energy, more than 600 will depend on cloud forests for water. Many of these countries will find it difficult to protect their forests or achieve biodiversity targets in the face of growing economic challenges, including mounting debts in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and rising food and energy prices. New systems need to be designed for countries to monetise the value of keeping their cloud forests standing. The study estimated that the total value of hydroelectricity that currently depends on cloud-affected forests across these 25 countries is close to $118 billion over 10 years. This increases to $246 billion when the hydropower plants currently being planned in these countries come online.