HSBC Pollination Climate Asset Management, Lombard Odier and Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, have announced that they are the three founding partners of the Natural Capital Investment Alliance, established by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales under his Sustainable Markets Initiative.

The alliance aims to accelerate the development of natural capital as an investment theme and to engage the US$120 trillion investment management industry and mobilize this private capital efficiently and effectively for natural capital opportunities.

As the world continues to tackle the twin climate and biodiversity crises, there is growing interest in investing in harnessing and preserving natural capital as a solution to reducing emissions, restoring biodiversity, and boosting sustainable economic growth and job creation. However, despite the fact that half of global GDP depends on natural capital, there are currently only a limited number of initiatives to promote nature as an investment opportunity.

To seize the scale of this opportunity, a finance-led approach is needed to integrate natural capital as an investment theme across different asset classes, as well as improved investor-centric descriptions of natural capital investment opportunities. That is the purpose of this newly formed alliance.

The alliance aims to attract members from the finance community to create scale, and synergistic bridges between mainstream asset owners and asset managers, underpinned by the following goals:

• mobilize US$10 billion towards natural capital themes across asset classes by 2022

• serve as a central hub for global corporations and financial institutions seeking to scale-up their investments into natural capital, in support of biodiversity restoration, including through carbon offsets, and

• share investment knowledge and expertise to help mainstream the natural capital investment theme and demonstrate scalability of appropriate vehicles and the multiple opportunities across asset classes.