Climate, Nature, and the Uneven Expansion of Financial Governance

Financial authorities have developed extensive climate‐related policies, but nature‐related financial policy remains less widespread. Using data on individual policy instruments across 116 jurisdictions from 2000 to 2025, this paper compares the adoption, policy areas, binding status, and source of climate‐ and nature‐related policies. Nature‐related policies appear in 27 jurisdictions, compared with 60 for climate‐only policies. National nature adoption is positively associated with a larger existing body of climate and environmental financial policies, mainly through the broader environmental component rather than climate‐specific policy. Climate‐only policies are used more frequently in prudential supervision and credit allocation than policies that combine nature with climate or broader environmental concerns. Nature‐related policies have a higher mandatory share over the full period but a lower share than climate‐only policies in 2023–2025. In the European Union, broad EU‐level coverage coexists with limited national issuance. The paper contributes a common framework for comparing climate and nature policies and distinguishes EU‐level coverage from national policy development. The results show that the climate‐nature gap concerns not only adoption, but also where policies are used, how binding they are, and which level of authority issues them.