Conservation Finance is Gearing Up for Wall Street

Welcome to the third phase of conservation finance. Over the last 25 years, we have moved beyond public and philanthropic capital and begun to witness the growth of private sector involvement in conservation. This process has involved the emergence of mitigation banking, carbon finance, and nutrient trading, and we are now seeing replicable and scalable models, like water funds, emerging worldwide.

However, in order to truly preserve the health of natural ecosystems globally, a much larger amount of capital is needed – not to replace, but rather, to supplement traditional sources of conservation capital. Moreover, while many conservation finance mechanisms have already been tested, most of the work has been focused on the conservation objective and how to meet financing demand for conservation initiatives. However, the supply side of conservation finance – essentially the perspective of investors and their investment approaches – has received much less attention.

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