About

As we develop scenarios and pathways for nature recovery, how can they be sufficiently resourced? Providing sufficient financial resources and prioritisation is among the greatest challenges facing nature recovery. Mobilising capital investment from funders and investors into projects and programmes that deliver measurable nature outcomes at the scale and pace required alongside incorporating adequate social safeguards is far from solved. At the same time, allocating monetary values to nature and profiting from it raises philosophical, cultural and moral questions.

Our paper found that most nature-related projects sit at the frontier of bankability: they lack track records, face high execution risk, and generate uncertain or delayed revenues, while investors continue to demand commercial returns and standardised, short-payback transactions. Complementing this, our research also shows that contractual mechanisms sit at the centre of any functioning nature market, but remain highly tailored, hard to scale, and costly to transact and that weaknesses here propagate through data monitoring, tracking and financial instruments to undermine investability. Alongside this, our work on decision useful nature metrics is examining how discrepancies across TNFD, ESRS, SBTN and State of Nature standards constrain the data foundations that financeable structures depend on.

Building on these findings, we will draw on our expertise in finance to systematically conceptualise, pilot, assess, and then scale a flexible architecture for funding nature recovery outcomes, designed from the outset to be financeable, investable, and insurable. We will work closely with finance researchers and practitioners to understand the requirements of financial institutions so that capital can be mobilised to enhance nature recovery at the scale and pace required.

Complementary projects

In addition to our core work, we are undertaking three complementary projects drawing on the following themes:

Reducing information asymmetries: designing and piloting tools that reduce information gaps between capital providers and nature recovery projects, addressing a major impediment to originating investable projects at scale.
Optimising public and philanthropic funding: developing approaches to leverage private finance from finite public and philanthropic funds across sub-national, national, and regional scales.
Nature recovery-linked finance: structuring metrics, KPIs and incentive structures for decision making, working with major financial institutions and businesses.