Put Some Landscape in your Ledger: Introducing a newsletter on nature- and people-positive finance

From saving the planet to making waves in the blue and green economies, sustainable finance reveals a whole universe of possibilities. It’s a fast-growing field that attracts more attention every day. In recent years, we’ve seen a bouquet of funding innovations like biodiversity credits and blue bonds sprout from it. But there’s still a major need for more connected, all-hands-on-deck solutions that focus on local communities for sustainable finance to reach its potential. Time to fill in the gaps and get everyone rowing in the same direction!

Every month, we’ll publish the most recent news and resources that champion innovative financing efforts at the intersection of people, places, and nature. We'll also reflect on what it means to fund healthy, thriving landscapes and offer tips on how investors, foundations, and the private sector can direct funding to support a more resilient future for these regions and the communities that live in them.

Who are we, you may ask? We’re a group of inspired individuals from organizations like CDP , Climate-KIC , EcoAgriculture Partners , and Commonland , all part of the 1000 Landscapes For 1 Billion People coalition. We channel our finance, ecosystem restoration, and global development expertise to pursue innovative solutions that help people and the planet thrive.

Join us as we dive into the power and potential of this emerging field!

The World Bank launches a $225 million Amazon Reforestation Bond. This bond mobilizes around $36 million in capital to support Mombak, a Brazilian company working with local landowners to replant native trees in the Amazon. This bond's unique approach, linking returns to the creation of carbon removal units (CRUs) rather than carbon credits from avoided emissions, sets it apart from the rest.?

Landscape finance leaders launch Systemic Climate Action Collaborative. This collaboration is a groundbreaking global initiative uniting 15 diverse partners–including Climate-KIC–working across all continents with a cumulative global track record of over 250 years in the field. The coalition brings together leading foundations, philanthropists, corporations, public institutions, and more in a collective endeavor to overcome climate inaction and fragmentation.

European food innovation coalition launches €30 million portfolio to accelerate and scale regenerative agriculture with a landscape approach. The Regenerative Innovation Portfolio will deploy innovative, scalable regenerative agriculture solutions across Europe via a landscape-based approach, ensuring solutions are tailored to local contexts and with cross-sectoral collaboration across agrifood value chains.

The Climate Finance Lab announces a historic 2024 cohort. This cohort’s groundbreaking initiatives aim to overcome climate finance barriers across the Global South. SVX Mexico’s women-led investment group Regenera Ventures Fund offers one of the most exciting opportunities, taking an explicit landscape-level approach to their investments.?

Finance for Gaia and BioFi Project recently launched a new book, Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet.

Pubilshed by the Buckminster Fuller Institute and co-authored by Samantha Power from Finance for Gaia & The BioFi Project and Leon Seefeld from Dark Matter Labs & Dark Matter Capital Systems, this book makes the case for the urgent development and piloting of a new structure to support this decentralization – the Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF) – which every bioregion on Earth could create to support its transition to a regenerative economy.???

Check out BioFi, the organization seeking to make this a reality.?

Financing for Regenerative Agriculture Report. Released earlier this summer by powerhouses from the The Rockefeller Foundation , Pollination, and Transformational Investing in Food Systems , this report outlines how investors can help fill the funding gap to shift conventional to regenerative and agroecological food production systems and take a systems approach to landscape contexts.?

Bridging the Regenerative Agriculture Financing Gap. This brief from Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment examines the varying definitions of regenerative agriculture. It highlights the innovative organizations attempting to overcome the barriers to entry and the novel methods they employ, along with promising approaches for the future.?

The Business Case for Company Action in Production Landscapes: Charting the Path Forward. This report captures findings and recommendations from a 15-month study initiated to advance understanding of landscape and jurisdictional approaches as a key corporate strategy for companies to achieve sustainable sourcing and have positive impacts in the regions from where they source.

Barriers and Recommendations for Scaling Private Sector Investment: The Case for a Nature Finance Accelerator. Authored by 普华永道 ’s Center for Nature Positive Business, this report profiles over 80 global nature finance vehicles, assessing the key barriers and opportunities for scaling private-sector investment in natural capital and providing recommendations to help drive financial flows towards nature – in particular, the establishment of a dedicated nature finance accelerator.?

Engaging Investors Through Strategic Communication: A Guide for Landscape and Jurisdictional Initiative Practitioners to Win the Partners They Need. This guide, developed by CDP and the Earth Innovation Institute , offers recommendations for landscape and jurisdictional initiatives to attract investors for sustainable, nature-positive, and socially inclusive rural development. It provides strategies for effective communication with donors, companies, traditional investors, and carbon credit buyers.

LandScale and CDP launched the Landscape Initiative Maturity Framework, a joint set of sub-criteria for assessing landscape initiative maturity. CDP and LandScale ’s Landscape Maturity Matrix provides a valuable framework for organizations implementing or supporting landscape initiatives to understand the minimum elements for credible disclosure of corporate engagements in landscape initiatives. See the webinar launch here.

Most recently, ISEAL , CDP , SBTN, and other organizations started working together to establish an updated set of core criteria and sub-criteria for landscape initiatives, which will be finalized in the coming weeks. Watch their most recent webinar to hear about existing tools available to assist companies in initiating or taking more landscape-scale action.??

Landscape GHG Accounting Guidance: Developing Landscape-scale Carbon Projects. Wetlands International and Conservation International , in collaboration with Commonland, Landscape Finance Lab , and Silvestrum, present the publication Landscape Carbon Accounting Guidance: How to Develop Landscape-scale Carbon Projects. The publication provides guidance on addressing the complexity associated with developing carbon projects at a landscape scale. See the launch webinar here.?

In our series, Demystifying Landscape Finance, leading voices on the frontlines of landscape finance reflect on what it will take to unite locally led, nature-based solutions with the right financial tools, infrastructure, and institutions to drive landscape-scale change.?

Better Finance for a Brighter Future: Introducing the Power of Landscape Finance

Relentless pursuit of growth and a bigger bottom line often comes at the cost of social and environmental well-being. Rapid deforestation, destructive agricultural practices, and dwindling water and food supplies all threaten the health of the communities that ultimately keep the global economy running. While increasingly popular financing solutions such as carbon credits and green bonds attempt to combat these challenges, they are often deployed for individual problem- and sector-based projects with little consideration of broader impact across regions. Many of these resources have a short shelf life, and funding needs for the long-term time horizons of ecological restoration and social processes focused on systemic change rarely align with investors’ visions or their mandates.??

Enter landscape finance, a refreshingly inclusive approach to navigating the persistent and often restrictive challenges of the existing finance system. Just as integrated landscape management (ILM) outlines a holistic approach to managing natural resources across sectors and territories, landscape finance offers a framework to reimagine where and how funding flows across climate, biodiversity, land use, and economic sectors. This challenges funders to address the interconnections between the world’s most formidable environmental and development problems. It also provides the framing they need to explore opportunities to finance more inter-connected portfolios at a scale large enough to affect meaningful change in threats from climate change to food insecurity and supply chain resilience. It also encourages funders, governments, and investors to move away from historically fragmented forms of funding conservation and development work, which is crucial for achieving long-term sustainable development goals.?

"Landscape finance doesn't focus on funding individual projects,” says 1000L finance solutions lead Seth Shames. “It provides a practical framework to direct investments strategically across entire landscapes or territories to meet multiple economic, social, and environmental goals."

Landscape finance works to weave diverse funding sources— such as those supporting nature conservation, restoration, and climate action—into a unified strategy. This more harmonious technique creates what 1000L partner Commonland calls the 4 Returns, generating social, ecological, and cultural outcomes that can ensure a more resilient planet. It considers the system as a whole and identifies strategic local investments that can address environmental and economic needs. This approach ensures that efforts are not just piecemeal but parts of a comprehensive plan to achieve long-term sustainability for a region.

Read the full article here.

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