The most recent global reports about the state of nature-related financing showcase the extraordinary challenge and opportunity for natural capital investments. UNEP showed notably that private sector finance for NbS only amounts to USD 18 billion/year. This includes biodiversity offsets, sustainable supply chains, private equity impact investment, and smaller amounts from philanthropic and private foundations. Thus, the total volume of finance flowing into nature is considerably smaller than the flow of climate finance today. In addition, the members of CPIC - a coalition for stimulating private investment in conservation launched during the last World Conservation Congress in Hawaii in 2016 - have identified key bottlenecks to scaling up private financing for nature, including a lack of investable project pipelines.
Nature+, a blended finance accelerator fund, has been designed to tackle this very challenge by developing a high-impact and nature-positive investment portfolio. The fund will invest in up to 50-70 early-stage investment projects with the potential to scale and reach up to 200m USD of investments in 10 years. The fund was born from the collaboration of public and private actors as part of the Conservation Finance Initiative. The initiative originated by CPIC and IUCN in collaboration with Mirova - an early mover in the natural capital investment space who designed the blended finance structure and developed initial pipeline and investment criteria - and supported by GEF - the largest environmental multilateral fund.
Nature+ will catalyze environmental markets. It will not only aim to scale up existing forest carbon projects but will also look to piloting emerging new methodologies such as blue carbon or biochar and other types of PES like biodiversity conservation, water, or plastic credits, to name a few. The fund has a broad scope covering both terrestrial and marine ecosystems and allocating some funding to disruptive/promising technological solutions. The fund is designed to test new innovative tools and methodologies such as IUCN's STAR tool and pilot new standards like the IUCN Global NBS Standard. The fund investors will be well-positioned to report against upcoming regulations/rules under the Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD).
The most promising path to achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement, while also halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity, is to shift away from nature-negative to nature-positive investment activities and assets under Nature-based Solutions (NbS). The governments will also adopt a new global biodiversity framework to guide action on protecting and restoring biodiversity worldwide over the next ten years. Given the global momentum, now is the time to bring the investment community on board to ensure that environment is firmly positioned in the investors' approaches to Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) with reliable metrics and measurable impact, which is currently lacking. The mission of Nature+ Accelerator Fund is to work at this innovative frontier through further catalyzing nascent environmental markets and creating an investible scalable pipeline of nature-positive projects so that, finally, the much-needed private capital will flow.
The IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille will present an excellent opportunity for IUCN members to engage with the cutting-edge and innovative blended finance solutions for nature - particularly on Nature+ at the IUCN pavilions and various events. We expect to exchange and take the joint learning to strengthen the role of the IUCN union in unlocking private finance for conservation in the future while also taking the lessons from Marseille to Kunming and then to Glasgow this year.
About the author
Edit Kiss is Investment and Development Director at Mirova Natural Capital. Since its launch in 2013, Edit manages the EUR100m Althelia Climate Fund, Mirova Natural Capital’s first pioneering climate and nature conservation fund. In addition, she is responsible for overseeing the carbon portfolio monetisation strategy through Ecosphere+, ACF’s marketing subsidiary as well leading on Mirova Natural Capital Platform’s new development activities, donor and strategic client partnerships. She is also co-chairing IETA’s Natural Climate Solutions working group.
Edit has over 15 years of experience in climate finance, carbon markets and conservation finance impact investing having worked in various financial institutions, carbon funds and renewable energy companies in London, Paris, Lugano, Rotterdam and Budapest.
She is an environmental economist, HEC Paris and CEMS Alumni and has been a guest speaker at several international climate and conservation finance conferences worldwide.
