Revenues for Nature backs seven financing models for restoration and conservation

London-based Green Finance Institute and the United Nations seek to mobilize $200 million in private capital for natural ecosystems by adapting or replicating promising nature-based financing models. Revenues for Nature’s first cohort includes Finance Earth’s loan fund for small fisheries; 3Keel’s network model for restoring degraded land in Europe; and an effort to replicate the Environmental Policy Innovation Center’s approach to wetlands habitat “offset” financing in Central America.

Revenues for Nature, or R4N, will cover the costs of landscape and policy analysis, pilot development, financial structuring and assist with other capacity support needs to bring the models to Europe, Asia and Latin America.

“By championing these pioneering models and approaches – scaling their impact, replicating their success, and sharing lessons learned where relevant – we will be able to accelerate progress toward closing the nature finance gap,” said Helen Avery of the Green Finance Institute.

Financing fish

UK-based Finance Earth partnered with the World Wildlife Fund in 2023 to launch the Fisheries Improvement Fund to help small fisheries transition to more sustainable practices that nurture and restore marine ecosystems. The model, piloted last year in Chile, provided capital upfront for improvements; the loans were repaid, with interest, through off-take agreements negotiated with the fisheries’ buyers. Finance Earth will use funding from R4N to expand the model to the Maldives.

Supply chains

Singapore-based Lestari Capital in 2022 launched an innovative financing mechanism to get large consumer goods companies, like Unilever and Nestle, to invest in sustainable palm oil production. The model, called the Rimba Collective, gets corporates to pay into a pool to cover the cost of conservation projects in palm-producing communities. Those projects receive the funding on a performance basis for specified outcomes. The corporates’ contributions to the projects are certified, allowing them to make verified claims about their sustainability work.

Lestari tested the model in the palm oil sector in Indonesia, and is now looking to adapt it for the fashion and textiles industry.

An initiative of the UN Environment Programme’s Financing Initiative – a launch partner on R4N – with Brazilian cosmetics giant Natura will provide receivables-based financing to farmers in the Amazon to shift to sustainable practices.

The UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative – another R4N launch partner – is expanding an ecosystem services payment approach with local partners in Colombia and Sri Lanka.