Water scarcity, deforestation, and climate change are not not just environmental concerns – they also pose a severe threat to global economic stability, this DLD26 conversation between Stientje van Veldhoven (World Resources Institute) and Xenia zu Hohenlohe (World Bank) makes clear.
“Already, 25% of the world is under extreme water stress every year”, van Veldhoven notes. With global warming, this problem will likely increase. “And of course, this is a risk for people”, she says, as well as a “massive risk to the economy. We see that 31% of global GDP is exposed to high water stress by 2050.”
Forests, van Veldhoven explains, are the planet’s “rainmakers”, generating moisture flows that sustain agriculture and economies far beyond their borders. Yet “nearly 20 football fields per minute of this critical infrastructure that we all depend on is disappearing.”
Deforestation is pushing the Amazon very close to a tipping point that would trigger “a massive collapse of food systems, of global supplies”, Xenia zu Hohenlohe warns. The World Bank’s Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF), launched at COP30 in 2025, aims to prevent the worst by acting as an innovative financial solution to protect rainforests.
The project is an example of “radical innovation”, zu Hohenlohe says, emphasizing its use of satellite monitoring, AI, and tokenization to ensure transparency and effectiveness.
