It is widely accepted that we need to protect at least half of the world in an interconnected way to preserve biodiversity, to stabilize the climate system, and for resilience to climate change that is already happening. It is also recognized that this must be done equitably and will require much more conservation finance than is currently available from governments.

Intact nature is a critical part of the climate system and the most important for biodiversity, freshwater supplies and other ecosystem services. It is an urgent problem because intact nature is being degraded every day. We also need a secondary strategy of ecological restoration because we have already damaged too much intact nature. However, restoration costs significantly more than maintaining intact systems, takes a long time, and may not achieve a return to a fully functioning ecosystem. Preventing further degradation of intact nature is the primary strategy because it is much more important to the functioning of the planet than restoration. (Globally, restoration is a secondary strategy but in areas that have already been heavily degraded it is a primary strategy).

To halt and reverse the ongoing degradation of nature by 2030, the world has set ambitious spatial nature conservation targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Target 1 calls for reducing the loss of intact areas to near zero by 2030, Target 2 calls for restoration of 30% of degraded areas and Target 3 calls for protection of at least 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and ocean. GBF Target 19 calls for mobilization of $200 billion dollars a year from both the public and private sectors. It also calls for synergies between biodiversity and climate finance.

At COP 28 in Dubai, the Parties to the UNFCC Climate Convention emphasized the importance of biodiversity and climate synergies to meet climate goals. The critical role of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems as sinks and reservoirs of CO2 and of protecting biodiversity in line with the GBF was explicitly recognized, as was the need to protect nature for freshwater supplies.

Although the global policy is now in place, the financial mechanisms for the private sector to participate in the urgent imperative to invest in intact nature are not.

Specifically, under the current functioning of the market, nature is worth more dead than alive; an intact forest is worth nothing but lumber is valuable, a free-flowing river is worth nothing but a dammed river produces energy molecules that can be sold, a fish or mammal in the ocean is worth nothing but a dead one can be sold for food. With few exceptions, protecting intact nature is seen as an opportunity cost to economies and as a barrier to business investment.

While the primary strategy of protecting intact nature is generally not investible, the secondary strategy of restoring damaged nature can attract private investment through carbon credits and government incentive programs. But intact nature that does not meet the very narrow criteria of additionality for carbon credits does not qualify. Intact nature generally provides no “additionality” because it is already doing the essential function to provide carbon sinks (pulling carbon out of the atmosphere) and storage (reservoirs that hold carbon), so it is worth nothing in current private climate finance options. In contrast, under international rules, governments can count investments in intact nature as climate finance without additionality.

In policy terms this means that GBF Target 2 for restoration can be financed with private climate money but Targets 1 and 3, the two most important Targets for both the climate and biodiversity, in the main cannot. This means that private sector is only incentivized to work on the secondary strategy. However, the primary strategy is much more urgent. Conservation of vast amounts of intact nature at large scales in places such as the Amazon, Congo, the forests of South East Asia and the peatlands of Northern Canada as well as all the remaining intact areas everywhere else is necessary to keep the planet functioning.

Governments have signalled clearly that there will not be enough money to meet biodiversity and climate goals without private sector participation. Philanthropy from private sources and corporations is very limited when compared to the scale of the problem and will come nowhere near closing the finance gap. Large-scale private sector investment is required.

Something needs to be done immediately to make intact nature investible or we will not meet our climate and biodiversity goals which has catastrophic implications for humanity.

The problem identified above is widely known but unsolved. It is a massive market failure that requires a public good solution. There is already widespread demand to invest in intact nature if it can be made into an attractive investment. The problem is simply that there is no supply of investable mechanisms.

The Intact Nature Conservation Finance Project directly addresses the challenge of creating incentives for the private sector to invest in intact nature for biodiversity and climate reasons and receive a financial return on the investment. It is complementary to current efforts around biodiversity credits and avoided deforestation that are based on the logic of additionality. It is also complementary to company-specific efforts to improve supply chains and reduce nature risks and dependencies.

The goal of this project is to develop a public good that can then be used by the private sector to make a profit while meeting global goals. Y2Y will derive no private pecuniary advantage. Its work is supported by philanthropic funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Palmer Family Foundation.