The BwB Talk Series gives our international network the opportunity to engage with and learn from innovative leaders in impact, finance, and the environment. The deep knowledge and experience shared across the series provides new perspectives, strengthens our market intelligence, and generates new ideas.
In January, we were joined by Julie McCarthy, CEO of Nature Finance, a non-profit organisation dedicated to reshaping financial systems to prioritise sustainability, biodiversity, and equitable economic outcomes.
Julie began by outlining Nature Finance’s strategic focus, the need for a multi-pronged approach to solving pressing global challenges—particularly in emerging markets and developing economies—and the importance of collaborative partnerships. She also provided an overview of the major geopolitical trends currently influencing the evolution and trajectory of nature finance, nature markets, and “green” economic transition.
To support its goal to accelerate the nature-positive transition of finance as a new global norm, Nature Finance has developed ‘Nature Align’, a tool that helps financial institutions, governments, and multilateral development banks to understand the nature footprint of their investments and operations and make informed decisions around nature-related issues.
Julie also spoke about scaling up innovative and equitable finance for nature, noting that while much theorising has been done on what the ideal biodiversity credit market would look like, “we still don't have demand from private finance to fund these instruments... we're really interested in working on the ground with stakeholders to solve that part of the equation”.
Nature Finance’s third strategic goal is to advance an enabling policy environment for nature-positive economic transition. The organisation is working with the G20 on the bioeconomy, “which represents an opportunity to inject nature into countries’ green transition strategies, which have focused primarily on energy to date”.
Question Time
The Q&A kicked off with the BwB team asking about the role of AI in nature-related solutions. Julie highlighted positives such as the Nature Align tool’s use of biodata that leverages AI and remote sensing to generate dynamic feedback on ecosystem health, and AI’s potential to help combat nature-related financial crime, while also noting the need to address the growing nature-related risks and dependencies of AI technology, particularly energy and water use.
With BwB having recently launched its Adaptation Centre for Excellence, there were also questions on the intersection of nature, adaptation and resilience solutions, and developing new financial structures to draw in private capital. Julie’s insights covered the links between climate, bioeconomy, and “opportunities to leverage nature for economic growth, and jobs and livelihood enhancement, as well as its mitigation, adaptation, and resilience potential”. Other topics included credit enhancement activities in the sustainability-linked debt space, and the use of tools such as Nature Align to support uptake of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures Framework and similar guidelines.
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