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With the ongoing sovereign debt and biodiversity crises in many emerging economies, applications of debt-for-nature swaps as a dual solution for sovereign debt and nature conservation have been re-emerging. We analyze how debt-for-nature swaps (DNS) can be scaled to protect biodiversity priority areas and reduce debt burden. We build a dataset for biodiversity conservation and debt restructuring in 67 countries at risk of sovereign debt distress and show that they hold over 22% of global biodiversity priority areas, 82.96% of which are unprotected. Furthermore, we show that for 35 of the 67 countries, using conservative cost estimates, 100% of unprotected biodiversity priority areas could be protected for a fraction of debt; for the remaining countries, applying DNS would allow the protection of 11–13% of currently unprotected biodiversity priority areas. By applying interdisciplinary research combining fundamental biodiversity and economic data and methods merging, the research contributes methodologically and practically to the understanding of debt-for-nature swaps for emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that in September 2021, China announced that it would stop building new coal-fired power plants abroad. Topics include examines this announcement was made while China did not change its approach to domestic coal plants and considered this stands in contrast to other countries, which typically announce domestic coal exit laws before stopping public funding for overseas coal.

Initiated in 2017 and formally established in 2020, the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) is the latest addition to the development finance landscape in Asia. This article provides an in‐depth analysis of MCDFʼs potential to offer additionality in development finance and its political legitimacy by comparing it to 18 development finance and capacity‐building organisations. The article finds that while the MCDF contributes to closing the substantial infrastructure financing gap in Asia, it risks overlapping with existing initiatives to such a degree that it may become an inefficient use of resources while lacking legitimacy as a multilateral organisation due to its unclear relationship with Chinaʼs Belt and Road Initiative. From this outset, and given the climate mandates of its multilateral development bank members, this article finds that if the MCDF focuses specifically on green and climate finance, it could carve out an area where it can become a much‐needed new platform for project development and coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]