The Editor's Post: Can nature be bankable?
We know what happens when nature gets depleted, yet finance towards nature-based solutions remains meagre. Could the emergence of a 'nature market' create a credible asset class that would follow the path of renewables? This week's view from the Pioneers Post newsroom.
Nowadays, destroying nature is more profitable than looking after it. Can nature become bankable – or at least bankable enough to attract the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to save our ecosystems? Our latest Earth Fixers feature explores how finance innovators are building the foundations of “nature markets” – a financial infrastructure that would enable investors to make money from saving nature, and as a result mobilise capital at the scale needed to preserve the earth.
We know what happens when nature gets depleted, because it’s happening across the world already: forests stop absorbing carbon, biodiversity plummets, extreme flooding and wildfire events become more frequent, food systems are disrupted.
Yet the private sector invests US$5tn in nature-harming activities each year; in contrast, only US$200bn goes towards nature-based solutions (actions that protect and regenerate nature while addressing social challenges) – a third of what would be needed to reach international nature and climate targets agreed at UN conferences.
But things are changing. The economic benefits of nature-based solutions are becoming better understood, and emerging sources of income, like more reliable carbon credits and biodiversity units, make nature-protecting projects more credible for investors.
Innovators including Finance Earth are helping environmental projects to develop commercial structures that can be profitable, while speaking to investors in a language they can understand. Meanwhile, big corporates such as insurance giant Aviva are making long-term investments (100 years-long!) to develop parts of the markets that can’t yet yield profits.
As evidence mounts that nature-based solutions can be investable, a whole new asset class is taking shape that could become as established as the renewable energy market today – which once was a small sector that investors deemed “high risk”, says Rich Fitton, investment director at Finance Earth.
Producing and selling electricity is perhaps a more tangible business model to sell to investors than talking about carbon or biodiversity credits; but for those who remember, 30 years ago (in great part due to oil and nuclear lobbyists) solar, for example, was still seen as an experimental niche that would never scale. Now it’s the fastest growing source of energy in the world – largely thanks to technological advances leading to lower costs and policy shifts. Can nature-based solutions follow the same path?
This week's top stories:
Building a market for nature: the finance innovators racing to save our ecosystems
Nick Hurd: Trump’s chilly bluster must be countered by warmer winds
The Impact World this Week: 5 December 2025
Top image: Oak sapling and Polytrichum moss, two common features of UK biodiversity. Photo courtesy of Aviva/Wildlife Trusts.
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