The business case for economic actors to address conservation and their reciprocal relationship with biodiversity is increasingly gaining reception. To transform the business and finance sectors’ approach to decision-making regarding nature, it’s imperative to showcase successful investments as inspiring examples.

Introducing CPIC’s latest conservation investment blueprints

Conservation investment blueprints – model financial transaction structures intended to help facilitate replicable investments in priority conservation projects. These blueprints enable financial institutions seeking to positively impact biodiversity through conservation projects to better understand existing frameworks for investment. We are excited to announce the release of four new blueprints focusing on sustainable agriculture and forest landscapes.

These blueprints outline the investment and operating model of each project, their impact measurement practices, and opportunities for scalability and replication. They serve as practical resources for stakeholders interested in conservation finance, including investors, financial institutions, project developers, and NGOs, offering insights into innovative approaches for channeling private finance to priority conservation projects.

Here is a brief look at the new blueprints:

• Transforming degraded land into productive forests through blended finance in Brazil – Highlighting Belterra’s use of a blended finance instrument and a financial support framework, this blueprint showcases an innovative business and investment model aimed at implementing and managing agroforestry systems. Belterra invests directly in small and medium-sized rural producers and assists the provision of loans from financial institutions to producers, while generating high-integrity carbon credits. Read the blueprint.
• Channeling private finance into habitat banking schemes in England – This blueprint focuses the RSPB’s use of a commercial debt instrument to refinance the acquisition of its habitat banking site, enabling delivery of habitat restoration in advance of income receipts, and freeing up the charity’s cash reserves to support its wider conservation efforts. Read the blueprint.
• Impact investment unlocking equity for scaling the use of agricultural by-products for sustainable livelihoods in Ghana – With the support of a low-interest loan from the Landscape Resilience Fund and IDH Farmfit Fund, Koa attracted additional commercial investments to its business. This strategic approach enabled the enterprise to scale its operations through increased production and enhanced its conservation impact. Read the blueprint.
• Channeling private finance into nature rewilding projects in England – This blueprint highlights Heal Rewilding’s innovative financial model for mid-scale nature recovery projects across England, leveraging a blend of concessional and commercial debt alongside public and private donations. Read the blueprint.

Dissemination webinar: A closer look at CPIC’s latest conservation investment blueprints

To delve deeper into these CPIC blueprints, we invite you to register for our dissemination webinar on 30 April 2024 at 9 – 10:30 AM (ET) / 3 – 4:30 PM (CET). This webinar presents an excellent opportunity to discuss the approaches, challenges, and lessons learned from these projects, informing future investments in similar conservation endeavors.

These blueprints were developed as part of the EU Horizon Strengthening Understanding and Strategies of Business to Assess and Integrate Nature (SUSTAIN) project and are a result of collaborative efforts between CPIC, South Pole, SUSTAIN partners, and the project proponents of each blueprint. 

SUSTAIN aims to provide businesses, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies with the knowledge and resources to better understand, assess, and monitor the dependencies and impacts on nature from activities across different sectors of the economy. Equipping financial institutions with resources to understand existing investment frameworks for biodiversity-positive projects is crucial in addressing biodiversity loss. This entails reducing business-related impacts and dependencies, while also encouraging their engagement in financing nature restoration projects.

High-risk sectors, such as agriculture and forestry, put a disproportionately high degree of pressure on nature or rely more heavily on its services compared to other sectors. For conservation projects within these sectors, it is especially critical to offer alternative, less harmful business models that are also more resilient to environmental change. In this context, the SUSTAIN project promotes the use of the ENCORE tool to ensure the effective identification and subsequent management of key nature-related impacts and dependencies in projects within high-risk sectors.