Nature-Positive Investing: From Intention to Systemic Impact
Our recent Nature Positive Investing event, hosted with Van Lanschot Kempen, centred on a single question: how do you deploy capital to drive systems change for nature and biodiversity while preserving financial return? An overarching theme was clear: nature is a precondition for durable value creation, which places it squarely within fiduciary decision-making. Speakers and panellists from across the institutional landscape, pension funds, insurers, and a practicing agricultural investor came to the same conclusion:
“Impact and return are inseparable parts of putting capital to work to reshape underlying economic models.”
Three key takeaways
- Move from thematic to systemic. The more powerful question is not “what do we invest in?” but “where can capital change the system?” A disciplined, bottom-up approach, strong manager selection, and a focus on attractive categories and regions make it possible to steer impact at the systems level and across asset classes, from sustainable agriculture to private equity and venture capital, with nature and biodiversity as the guiding framework.
- Nature, food, and health are one system. Roughly 70% of biodiversity loss stems from the global food system, making health and biodiversity two sides of the same coin. PGGM’s “3D” approach, weighing risk, return, and sustainability equally, under the principle of “know what you own”, illustrated the discipline this demands, narrowing its equity universe from around 4,000 to 700 companies through deliberate choices along those three dimensions.
- Evidence and data are the enablers. Biodiversity risk is becoming financially material through supply chains and regulation, and dynamic, location-specific nature data allows investors to prioritise risks, drive engagement, and track progress. The critical task now is building the proof that impactful solutions also deliver commercially, so that institutional capital can follow at scale.
In short: nature-positive investing means thinking in systems and backing new economic models. Through collaboration between investors, pragmatic measurement, and targeted deployment of capital, nature can become an integral part of portfolios, financially robust and systemically relevant.