How do you get 195 countries to agree on a plan for as divisive a topic as climate change? “It’s pretty simple. You make sure that all representatives of all 195 governments that have to agree to this are in the room. Then you lock the doors,” Christiana Figueres, the chief negotiator for the landmark 2015 Paris Climate accord, half-joked at SOCAP’s packed opening session.
Mental boundaries, such as short-term thinking and even the concept of a nation-state, have held back climate progress. “The process to get to the Paris Agreement was really a five-year effort of inviting all these government representatives to pierce beyond those two boundaries,” she says.
Breaking barriers to accelerate climate action was a theme at SOCAP last week, which came as the COP16 global biodiversity conference was wrapping up in Cali, Colombia, and just two weeks before global climate negotiations kick off at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Biodiversity bust
COP16 wound down without an agreement on how to fund the protection of nature and biodiversity, including a pledge to protect 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. As in global talks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, wealthy nations balked at putting up the funds needed to support action by the Global South.
Still, nature has been rising up the climate agenda as more investors and leaders appreciate that the issues are inextricably linked.
“We should be working toward a much more holistic way of measuring our impact and our relationship with the planet that doesn’t artificially create boundaries that make sense to humans, but don’t make any sense to nature,” Figueres told ImpactAlpha.
Nature on the balance sheet
The shift includes putting a monetary value on nature, rather than treating it as something that only has value when it is extracted. Biodiversity credits, akin to carbon credits, are gaining interest as one way to do that.
But nature may defy such monetization. Tom Chi of San Francisco-based VC firm At One Ventures called for “a new category called sacred” for natural ecosystems that drive the planet’s core metabolism. “I think every human being can understand that precisely,” he said. “Trading [carbon] credits is way more complicated than understanding sacredness.”
Only in recent human history has the extraction mentality become dominant; Indigenous communities have lived for generations in harmony with the land, added SVX’s Ortiz. “We do know how to be architects of abundance.”
Urban restoration
Most discussions of biodiversity revolve around rainforests, mangroves or rural farms. Urban restoration efforts require different funding mechanisms, argues Anastasia Mourogova Millin of Ombrello Solutions.
Instead of paying for ecosystem services, says the former banker, “Let’s underwrite nature based on the value it creates to adjacent assets.” For example, every $1 invested in nature and biodiversity create about $100 worth of real estate value over 30 years, she says.
Mourogova Millin’s Civic Infrastructure Bond, anchored by the Woodcock Foundation, taps commercial real estate developers for 10% of the increased asset value in order to pay off bonds floated to create parks and other projects, starting in Montreal. After the bond is paid off, the real estate proceeds will go into a community endowment fund.
Says Mourogova Millin: “Let the community hold the park forever, in perpetuity, and have access to the carbon credits and other services,” which can fund other community priorities, such as affordable housing.
