Climate Week and scaling nature investment

So much to learn during a whole week focused on climate and nature in New York City, but what shows up here is just the ripples caused by a lot of hard work and progress that is going on 24/7 everywhere else. Here are the top five things on my mind in the midst of a lot of planet-focused announcements this week:?

1. ?It’s clear from so much of the content coming out of Climate Week that we need biodiversity credits more than ever.? Love this 5-minute video explaining biodiversity credits by Terrasos’ founder, Mariana Sarmiento , and the World Economic Forum, talking about how important credits are to the global south. Radha Kuppalli’s piece on pricing and nature is another bit of fresh air about biodiversity’s future in a market-based world.
2. Sharing an opinion piece making the case that climate and biodiversity are distinct problems with different solutions, especially when it comes to the use of biodiversity credits: they are needed for many reasons, including to compensate for harm to nature that cannot be avoided from our development activities but also our economies’ supply chains.? This is one of the biggest areas of unresolved debate that is holding back a lot of progress.
3. The State of California lauded the delivery of the largest wetland restoration?in the state’s history last week. In the words of Wade Crowfoot (Secretary of Natural Resources), “one thing that makes this project special…public private partnership.” The 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) project wouldn't have been possible without private capital, real estate transaction know-how, experience in restoration project delivery, and Adam Davis 'patience and capacity to muscle through the complex permitting that increasingly bedevils so many nature-benefiting projects.? This is one of many efforts that show the scale of what we can now do for the planet, with clear public goals and procurement authorities.? For international audiences, there are lessons here in how innovators who become proficient at successfully delivering biodiversity credits can scale up to provide huge nature outcomes for government agencies.
4. In order to restore ecosystems around the world we need more finance – that gets most of the Climate Week attention.? But we also need it to be easier to get permission to restore nature, especially in developed countries with the most complex processes to say yes to nature restoration. Legislatures and governments around the world are working to make environmental permitting faster energy transition infrastructure – thanks to cBrain and #Denmark for your continuing leadership and innovation on this.? But permitting nature restoration has gotten harder in the last decade. I expect this problem is worse in America than anywhere else but know it’s not unique to us.? It can take an average of four years to get permission to restore some kinds of wetlands.? Other restoration permits can take up to a decade and may cost $0.5 million or more in legal and planning costs.? Thus, it was a huge win for U.S Army (which is our wetland permitting agency – long story) to release a directional memorandum to staff last week that was all about efficient decision-making, deadlines, and shorter timelines to permit restoration.?
5. Government support and funding for restoration is great – including the U.S. government’s announcement of $92 million more for freshwater ecosystem restoration this week. Yet what I’m especially excited about are all the investors and fund managers we’ve been speaking to who are finding new reasons to bring biodiversity-first investments into existing portfolios or creating new funds in part around biodiversity. What’s clear is that we could still use more government involvement in providing first-loss capital, buyer-of-last-resort agreements, and loans, bridging loans and loan guarantees centered on nature restoration.? I haven’t seen anything announced yet that suggests this is getting fixed, but would love info from Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE or others on what I might have missed in NYC.