The Biodiversity Council takes a look at what’s in the budget for nature before going on to discuss if governments should look to the private sector to meet conservation funding shortfalls.

Pretty heavy topics but very watch/ listenable and thought provoking.

Some questions the webinar raised & somewhat answered that left me hankering after more information:

How much do we spend on nature?

Can nature conservation be fully funded by private investment?

Nature Markets – What is the potential?

Are real world conversation needs financially attractive (for private investment).

I enjoyed the segment presented by Sophus zu Ermgassen, from Oxford University. He Studies how private finances actually worked in nature conservation over last 50 years. 

Points I highlighted from the presentation.

• Thinking that the future of nature funding is via private finance is out of whack with how things are currently.  Private enterprise funding is low & nature-based projects are often not able to deliver attractive returns in desired timeframes.
• Saying the boom is just around the corner is not living up to hype. Same thing has been said for decades.
• When investors say they are interested in your project as long as returns are sufficient remember that investors will invest in literally anything that delivers sufficient returns. May need around 15% per year return. Not realistic in what we do.
• Private money can’t replace public it.  If you don’t spend enough setting it up, you can achieve almost nothing by private money & systems.
• Thinking that private finance is more scalable than public money isn’t true. Government have to want conservation and support funding
• The future is best served via a balanced portfolio of public and private. There are lots of private conservation works that private funders will never be interested in. 

There are currently US $7.3 trillion  in economic investments that destroy nature of which $4.9 trillion private money, $2.4 trillion public.

Building nature markets for creating private goods out of public goods is really hard. Making rubbish markets is very easy. 

Future benefits are discounted today as investors chase fast revenues.  Most conservation does not do that.