Recent years have seen the emergence of innovative financial transaction mechanisms designed to help reverse the alarming trends in biodiversity loss. If implemented at scale, these mechanisms could help to kickstart a nature economy, where financial flows would take account of the natural laws and boundaries of our planet.
A new report by the Luc Hoffmann Institute – Mapping the Landscape for a Nature Economy – provides an inventory of these new transaction mechanisms and a range of related enabling frameworks. In doing so, the report aims to stimulate discussion and creative exploration. Further research on how well the mechanisms perform is needed to identify those most likely to attract large capital providers.
“Since we live in a world motivated and driven by economic incentives, giving an economic value to nature should provide an incentive to preserve it,” says Adrian Dellecker, Head of Strategy and Development at the Luc Hoffmann Institute. “This report takes an important step towards creating a nature economy that bridges the gap between academic valuations of nature’s benefits and the real-world transactions that are needed to fund conservation.”
The report describes a total of 23 transaction mechanisms and examples of their implementation. The mechanisms range from fiscal interventions and regulatory instruments to new government-enabled markets, traditional market-based instruments and hybrid mechanisms. The inventory also lists enabling frameworks, which provide common approaches to accounting and valuation. And finally, it covers the global datasets and standards that are necessary for the transaction mechanisms to be scaled up.
The authors of Mapping the Landscape for a Nature Economy are Britta Rendlen, an independent advisor on sustainable finance, and David Uzsoki, who is Sustainable Finance Lead and Senior Advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The report is published in collaboration with IISD and the MAVA Foundation.
