The intention of this site is to explore the increasing relationship between finance and nature. Climate change and its deterring consequences for humankind are two of the most pressing issues of our time.  The urgency of these issues has forced a reformulation in how to conduct business and a realignment of financial flows, either by halting the financing of nature-deterring activities or by the redirection/creation of flows in the direction of climate/nature-friendly activities.

A big part of understanding this bond relies on disentangling what is nature, its benefits to us and how can we valuate these benefits so as to be able to gauge a budget when in need of preserving, restoring, offsetting, etc. Now, defining nature is a rather complex task and we consider that all things derive from nature in one way or the other, so you could say nature is everything.  Hence, we are not so much interested in nature per se but in the flows generated by it, known as ecosystem services (ES). The scheme below describes the way we conceive this flow.

Briefly, from right to left, biodiversity constitutes a fundamental feature of nature, sometimes loosely referred to as natural capital (NC) or the planet. Biodiversity represents the variety of life that compose the stock of nature; its interaction with non-living resources derives into the complex and poorly understood ES. ES represent a constant flow from one end, nature, to the other, society. Society is the beneficiary and is currently at the stage of acknowledging this fact through the process of valuating these services for the aforementioned reasons.

With all this in mind, this webpage will analyze thoroughly the growing symbiosis between finance and nature by exploring elements of it through different sections. The following sections will be based on the scheme below.