A world that puts nature first: Can the finance sector get us there?

The finance sector talks about a nature-positive transition, but actual money flows don’t match the rhetoric. Nature-negative finance dwarfs investments to protect and restore nature: for every $1 invested $30 are spent on activities degrading it. 

What would it take to reverse these flows? What structures and incentives do we need to create? In April 2026, as part of the Marmalade Festival and Skoll World Forum, we brought together leading experts and thinkers to tackle these thorny questions.

Here are a few of the insights and interventions offered at the event – and to hear it in full, download the Global Canopy podcast.

Pavan Sukhdev

Founder and CEO of GIST Impact

“If the question was will the finance sector get us there, I would not know how to answer you, but can the finance sector get us there? The answer is a definite yes. Companies need finance. It’s the blood in their veins without this they cannot function.

“Today’s externalities are tomorrow’s risks and tomorrow’s risks are the day after tomorrow’s losses. So how do we look at externalities? I’m going to give one example of asset ownership – so let’s begin with the largest, NBIM [Norges Bank Investment Management].  

“They’ve taken from us [GIST Impact] data which measures the impacts of every company in their portfolio, over 8500 companies… These impact numbers inform them of externalities, which are surrogates of risk. They are not risks, but they can become risks and therefore losses. 

“Within their mandate they can invest in any energy company or any technology company. They can trade out of any portfolio based on the impact intensity. The higher the impacts… the less likely they are to meet their 2050 target of a net-zero portfolio. So what do they do? Find opportunities to exit high impact intensities and buy in the low impact intensities.

“If both investors as well as the bankers insisted on the measurement and disclosure of the impacts of every company in their portfolios or in their loan portfolios, not just the financial performance but also the natural capital, human and social capital impacts, at least the information would be available for investors and for bank lenders to make the right decisions.”

Pavan Sukhdev, Founder and CEO of GIST impact

“Over time they have measured the results of the approach and if they were to undo the last several hundred transactions… not only would their climate intensity be 9% higher … their portfolio would be .65% lower yield. 

“So when you hear from these naysayers, that there’s this trade off between environmental responsibility and profitability, bullshit. This is a statistically significant sample. Anyone who tells you that there’s an inverse correlation between profitability and good governance is wrong.”

Alexandra Pinzon-Torres

Nature-Positive Lead, Global Canopy

“There is potential for the finance sector to support the transition towards a nature-positive economy, but finance is part of a larger ecosystem needed to support that transition. 

“Today nature is more valuable dead than alive. When we value nature it is because it is fulfilling a purpose in the market, so timber is valuable because the tree has already been chopped down. I’m not entirely sure the finance sector can address this on its own. We probably need to realign the incentives around the finance sector to value correctly the role nature has in providing resilience, and shift the vision from the short term proposition that we have for the financial sector and incorporate the value of resilience that nature is bringing.

“We need to paint a picture of what this transition and the future that we want is. We need to be pioneering, so let’s get our hands together and let’s work together on that.”

Alexandra Pinzon-Torres, Nature-Positive Lead, Global Canopy

“Every bit of finance has an impact, whether it’s negative or positive. The State of Finance for Nature report is very clear, saying that US$7.3 trillion in finance is moving in exactly the wrong direction. This is not a problem of lack of finance. There is money out there, but the US$220 billion going into nature-based solutions cannot compete with the huge financial tsunami that is going into nature-negative stuff.

“For a long time we’ve been going with the narrative of stopping the finance sector doing bad things. I think we need to paint a picture of where then they move their capital towards. What is the good thing they need to do instead? We need to paint a picture of what investing in nature-positive looks like, what are those opportunities and those alternatives?

“Excitingly that is getting traction with the TNFDs publication on nature related opportunities and our own Little Book of Nature Business that actually makes the case for opportunities across the whole economy, how we start thinking about that pipeline of potential investments

“And I think the third point is about recognising where the finance sector actually stops working for certain things. Nature in some instances has the characteristic of providing public good. Sometimes the finance sector will not be able to finance that and it is probably the role of the government to support the production of those public goods.”

Jenny McInnes

Climate and Finance Lead at Ostara

“I think this is all about systems. Can the finance sector get us there? It has to be part of the solution, it’s necessary but not sufficient. It has to be part of a wider system of rules and checks and balances. But there’s also a role for catalytic finance and for civil society at the margins to be identifying those opportunities and helping to demonstrate them.

“That’s everything from the institutional frameworks at a country level, the climate plans – NDCs, the nature plans – NBSAPs, and how those are then institutionalised. How do they actually affect decision making across governments that unlock flows of finance without anyone having to care about it. And that’s key as well, because if we’re going to require every single person to be thinking about the impact of their finance, we’ve lost. We’ve got to make this passive.

“There’s an expectation that finance will drive this. I don’t think it will. Finance will help demonstrate what’s possible within the parameters that exist, but there’s a role for others to extend those parameters. 

“Finance is a mirror of the real economy and if the demand isn’t coming in from the real economy then the finance isn’t going to flow either. There’s a complex interaction, like in an ecological system, that needs to be thought through in order to unlock the finance.”

Jenny McInnes, Climate and Finance Lead at Ostara

“We’ve tied ourselves in knots as a nature finance community, putting so many constraints in place for actors on the ground to actually access finance. A lot of the challenge is a structural one. There’s plenty of finance and there’s plenty of demand, but there’s not enough happening in the margins. We know this from a lot of other sectors, particularly transition sectors. A sector going through transition needs different finance in different stages and for different actors.”

“We really need to think about how we identify something and the route to scale through connectivity with other things rather than big shiny new initiatives. How do we get better at finding that route to scale through the system?”

Pajani Singah

Co Founder and Investment Director Amazonia Impact Investors

“Part of the problem is that finance doesn’t flow from the global north to the global south due to the nature of it being extractive and how it was set up from the colonial times – to go and extract and bring back.

“I think finance can work, but we shouldn’t be stuffing finance down the throat of people who don’t need it. We work from the bottom up, instead of a top down approach – where people promise to deploy US$100 billion, and then the money just doesn’t flow. So we look at what is needed and then we go and raise funds for it.”

“We use blended finance from the investors’ side and we deploy impact linked loans to the communities, aggregators and off takers in that supply chain. And when you have accountability for the capital you’re really going to make a difference. Moving away from capitalism to a conscious capitalism model…We need to move away from this dumb idea that we need to crystallise cash very quickly.

“I come from the global south, and money doesn’t serve marginalised communities in the global south. Access to funding is very important and we want to deploy as much as possible and hopefully more companies like Amazonia come into the field and that’s how we deploy capital at a large scale.”

“Put your money where your mouth is. Vote with your feet. Too many times people sitting in foundations or on the investment side say ‘we’re still figuring out our PRI. But it is your job to unlock it. We are the 0.1% of people who are privileged to be here. It’s our job to move the capital. It can’t be just financiers, it can’t be just foundations. Everyone has to do it.”

Pajani Singah, Co Founder and Investment Director of Amazonia Impact Investors