Bringing Policy, Markets, and Communities Together
The London Climate Action Week (LCAW) session, held on 27 June 2026, asked a direct question: why is biodiversity loss a financial risk, and what can capital do about it? Organised by the Climate Social Forum with Giving Life Nature Volunteer (GILINAVO), the hybrid event brought policy, finance, field science, and community action into one conversation. Domenico Vito coordinated the interventions. Susanna Mohamed brought the COP16 perspective, Giovanni Moratti explained Regg3’s method, Dr. Asghar Khan shared evidence from Pakistan’s mountains, and Dennis Odero added the view from African finance. The result was not a general discussion about nature. It was a practical map for turning biodiversity into a core part of financial decision-making.
A Stronger Way to See Nature
The event began from a simple truth: biodiversity supports the systems every economy depends on. Clean water, healthy soil, crop pollination, climate stability, and resilient communities are part of the operating system that allows businesses to function and grow. When ecosystems weaken, companies face disrupted supply chains, higher operating costs, lower productivity, and reputational risk. Yet the tone of the event was hopeful. Nature is not only a risk to manage. It is also a source of innovation, resilience, and long-term value. For sustainability-focused companies, this means moving from protection as compliance to protection as strategy.
Regg3’s Argument: Nature Is Invisible Until We Can Price It
Giovanni Moratti described Regg3’s work as a tool for closing the translation gap between the value ecosystems create and the numbers investors use. According to the World Economic Forum, over half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its ecosystem services. Ecosystems create wealth, while business activities often erode ecosystem resources and services; yet neither reality is fully visible in the financial numbers investors use.
His answer is a shared language that captures ecosystems and social equilibrium as a market-like dynamic. Regg3 combines natural and social science data in territorial analysis, using social and environmental indicators to show where sustainable activities can create regenerative value in response to the territorial socio-environmental needs. This helps public funds, enterprises, and investors understand biodiversity as an economic opportunity, not a cost.
In this framing, biodiversity becomes one of the economy’s largest wealth creators. The task is to make that value visible and understandable in order to drive and facilitate investment in regenerative activities, including biodiversity enrichment.
Ecosystem-Based Development: Planning With Nature
Dr. Asghar Khan’s presentation brought the discussion from theory to the ground. Through the idea of Ecosystem-Based Development, or EBD, he showed that nature can be treated as productive infrastructure, not as an obstacle to progress. Forests, soils, water, and pollinators support livelihoods and economic stability, while local communities often already know how to manage them. For companies, the lesson is clear: the most resilient projects are those designed with ecosystems, not around their destruction.
Lessons from Mountain Communities
The examples from Malakand, Pakistan, showed how community knowledge can create real value. In village graveyards, sacred Acacia trees are protected for cultural and religious reasons, and these trees provide refuge for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. As these pollinators move into nearby orchards and fields, they can help increase yields by 15 to 30 percent without extra financial input from farmers.This shows that local ecosystems already support income, food security, and risk reduction, often before formal finance enters the picture. Finance can help by improving market access, supporting data collection, and strengthening community-led solutions, but companies should first understand what people and nature are already doing well.
Biodiversity Credits Need Integrity
The session also explored biodiversity credits. They can attract private finance, create scale, and help nature receive economic value. However, the discussion recognised real risks, including weak standards, land grabbing, distraction from public policy, and limited impact. Companies should treat credits as tools, not shortcuts. A strong credit should be local, verified, additional, permanent, transparent, and fair to communities. Credits work best when they fund real restoration and sit inside a wider nature strategy that first reduces harm. The future trends are promising, especially the move toward local markets, stronger links between voluntary and compliance systems, and better nature accounting.
Practical Lessons for Sustainability Companies
Companies working in sustainability-related fields can act now. They can map dependencies on water, forests, soil, pollinators, and community land management across supply chains. They can finance community natural resource projects, especially women-led and youth-led enterprises. They can invest in biodiversity data infrastructure, because there are no credible credits or disclosures without measurement. They can design biodiversity-linked loans, green bonds, ecosystem-service insurance, and procurement contracts tied to nature outcomes. Most importantly, they can work with communities and researchers as co-designers. That approach builds trust, improves data, lowers risk, and creates solutions that last beyond a reporting cycle.
From Risk to Renewal
The event opened with the reality that biodiversity loss is a financial risk, but it also showed that nature can become one of the greatest investment opportunities of our time when its value is measured, respected, and financed. Companies that lead this shift will no longer treat ecosystems as external scenery, but as living infrastructure that supports supply chains, communities, and long-term growth. They will price what was invisible, support communities that already protect nature, and build business models that grow with the systems that sustain life. In this sense, financing nature becomes a practical investment in the future every economy needs.
