Roundtable 'How to invest in biodiversity'

November 5, 2025

^{This round table report was originally written in Dutch. This is an English translation.}

The biodiversity market has great potential, but it has yet to be recognised as such and explicitly linked to mitigating biodiversity loss and enabling solutions. To date, there is no evidence that regenerative agriculture or sustainable forestry is less profitable than traditional agriculture or forestry. This therefore offers investment opportunities.

By Hans Amesz

Does investing in biodiversity offer opportunities?

Robert-Alexandre Poujade: ‘Absolutely. Precisely because there has been so much loss of biodiversity (according to the WWF, biodiversity has declined by more than 70% since the 1970s), restoring and returning to 100% healthy ecosystems offers a great investment opportunity. I am quite optimistic about the role of the financial sector in contributing to this and channelling our clients' money towards recovery.'

Lucian Peppelenbos: 'It offers an opportunity with a forward-looking perspective. The financial materiality is limited for the time being, but will increase in the long term. A sub-theme such as water is financially material in many sectors and regions, but a theme such as pesticides is less so. It depends on policy and progress in the real economy. In the longer term, investing in biodiversity is becoming increasingly material. The underlying science is not changing, so it is a future-oriented transition opportunity. Companies that are preparing for this transition can be an attractive investment. Many of our institutional clients have such a long-term perspective, so for us as an asset manager, it offers a commercial opportunity to work with them.'

Sasha Miller: ‘We believe that there are investment opportunities today in areas such as nature-based solutions and the emergence of environmental markets. As a major natural capital investor in agricultural and forest land, we focus on five themes: biodiversity, soil health, climate mitigation and resilience, water, and communities. What often remains undervalued is the potential of fixed-income markets as a solution with high impact and scalability. We have developed and established new forms of financing: recently, for example, the Amazon reforestation bond, an outcome bond. There are also instruments such as blue bonds. These are opportunities to mobilise capital for concrete solutions and have been in operation for some time. The templates we create are now becoming more scalable: what used to take more than eighteen months to set up can now be done more quickly. With such templates, you can mobilise more capital to solve urgent issues, including biodiversity.

Jolien de Jongh: 'For the short term, I am thinking of direct real estate investments. I see opportunities, particularly when it comes to the value of a building or area. It moves between risk reduction and investment opportunity. For example, you can create more shade, which improves the quality of life. This can generate higher rental income and increase the value of the property. The same applies to better water solutions. We need to be creative in linking this to existing real estate products.'

Gerard Roelofs: ‘No one has yet proven that regenerative agriculture or sustainable forestry is less profitable than ‘traditional’ agriculture or forestry. So there is an opportunity there. Indirect impact – agritech, aqua tech – simply falls within venture capital and private equity: it may fail or succeed, but it does not necessarily have to underperform the broader universe. And as for new fixed-income instruments such as outcome bonds, green bonds and blue bonds, they do not have spreads that differ from government bonds. The “biodiversity market” has enormous potential, but it has yet to be recognised and explicitly linked to mitigating biodiversity loss or enabling solutions.

Are the greatest opportunities in the short, medium or long term?

Roelofs: ‘Society, regulators and we as investors have not yet arrived at a definitive set of KPIs and an unambiguous definition of biodiversity. As long as we continue to argue about this, it will take too long to measure properly. As a result, underlying investments are focused on the medium to long term rather than the short term.’
 

To get things done, it helps to set a good example. Just do it, start small, make it visible and share it with lots of people.

 
Sophie Kamphuis: ‘The need for funding is certainly there in the short term. One of the goals for 2030 in the Global Biodiversity Framework is to mobilise at least two hundred billion dollars per year to finance biodiversity. This amount must be achieved in part through the use of impact investments, green bonds and instruments such as blended finance and biodiversity credits. It is important that institutional investors explore such instruments, especially if the ambition of pension funds – and participants – is to make more of an impact. In addition, opportunities linked to biodiversity risks should not be ignored. These opportunities already exist – think of precision agriculture – which reduces both the impact on biodiversity and dependence on environmental factors.’

Nikki Trip: ‘There are already many possibilities on the risk and investment side. Even if policymakers take their time, we must take the risks seriously now because they are very real. We must make every effort to ensure that the opportunities are seized in the short term, to save what can be saved now and then preserve and protect it in the long term.

Why are we not investing massively in solutions? What are the challenges in making biodiversity investable?

Peppelenbos: 'What has held us back in recent years is the enormous effort required to establish definitions, data and measurements. I am now convinced that we are leaving that behind us. Last year saw two important breakthroughs. Firstly, in the joint definition of the most important nature impacts per industry sector. This provides focus. And secondly, improved datasets with data at issuer level have become available. These two developments make nature measurable and controllable in investment portfolios.'

Poujade: ‘It's all about credibility. Lean on best practices and standards, such as those of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials ( PBAF, and so on, and build the most credible product for the asset class in question, given the specific data restrictions. I opt for the broadest possible definition, so that different types of clients – whether they invest in ETFs or private assets – can get on board, each with their own requirements. It must not only be “good” for biodiversity, but also for climate and social aspects. Governance must reflect that. There are always trade-offs; you weigh them up and make a decision.
 

What has held us back in recent years is the enormous effort required to set up the definitions, data and measurements.

 
De Jongh: 'If you really want to make progress, you have to look at the full spectrum of your investments. That means examining the value chains of all the companies in which you invest. If, for example, the value chain of such a company involves the extensive use of chemicals that are discharged, waste or poor working conditions, then as an investor you are effectively perpetuating this. If the chain causes too much damage, you should not invest in it. So it's not just about promoting biodiversity through opportunities, but also through exclusion.

Poujade: ‘Asset managers have an exclusion policy for specific sectors and companies. We have published sector criteria (wood, pulp, palm oil, agriculture, oil and gas, mining, etc.) and also look at Global Compact violations in the environmental field. Take industrial fishing on the high seas, for example: if a company accounts for 100% of the fishing effort there, the risk of overfishing and human rights violations is high. You can exclude such a company. The same applies to mining and other sectors.

How does nature/biodiversity fit into your investment approach? Doing less “bad” or doing “more good”? Is it purely about impact allocation or does it generate regular investment returns?

Miller: 'The answer is: both. Integration and engagement play a key role in the investment process. On the impact side, and with regard to concerns about greenwashing, we have clear internal impact definitions and follow the Operating Principles for Impact Management – we are one of the founders and continue to focus as a company on setting industry standards. Every investment has a theory of change and measurable outcomes. We have the entire impact process verified externally. In fixed income, we focus on direct and measurable results through impact bonds. All our impact products in all asset classes are focused on both financial returns and impact results.’

De Jongh: ‘In the Netherlands, we only have direct real estate. Since January, we have been working with a number of other asset managers. We took a map of the Netherlands and looked at all the municipalities where we are present. Based on that, we selected two locations where we want to improve the entire area in collaboration with an ecologist and the municipality. This includes greening, but also solutions for water and heat, for example. You can achieve more in a larger area than if each party only looks at its own building or street. To be honest, measuring this is still complicated. We want a considerable degree of detail that offers immediate prospects for improvement. That is why we are testing a number of methods, such as calculating how much CO2 the greenery captures.

How do you embed this strategically? How do you integrate biodiversity, with less of the bad and more of the good?

Peppelenbos: “When it comes to nature, we often use 'less bad versus more good”, but we do that less when it comes to climate. Are electric vehicles and wind turbines “good” or “less bad”? Let's follow the mitigation hierarchy: avoid, reduce, restore, system change. All of this is “doing good”: it contributes to global policy agreements to halt nature loss in the long term. This must be measurable in order to be credible. So yes, we need investments in nature itself, such as agriculture and forest land, but also in companies that measurably and credibly reduce their negative impact and contribute to halting and reversing nature loss.'

Roelofs: 'The CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, says little about what we should do about nature loss, let alone how we should measure it. If we had a parallel approach throughout the chain, as we do with climate, we would also know who is contributing negatively or positively. But we are not there yet. The sense of urgency to define, measure and take action is still too limited. Even when it comes to innovative forms of financing to halt biodiversity loss, for example through blended finance, where the state can play a clear role, that urgency is hardly present."

Peppelenbos: 'I disagree with regard to definitions and measurements. A tremendous amount of work has been done: TNFD identifies where dependencies and impact are high for each sector, with corresponding core metrics. The data for this is far from complete, but good enough to provide guidance. We can accurately determine which companies are performing well, reasonably or poorly in terms of nature transition in material sectors such as materials, energy and real estate.

Kamphuis: “For your liquid portfolios, there are plenty of opportunities to 'do less badly” based on data. You can identify which companies have a greater or lesser impact on various drivers of biodiversity loss and steer accordingly. To achieve a positive impact, we have investigated propositions for a direct and indirect (or systemic) impact on biodiversity. We see many opportunities in sustainable forestry, regenerative agriculture and technological solutions within private equity.

Miller: 'There is still work to be done on data. We don't have everything we need at the moment, and that is what the transition and much of the involvement is currently focused on. It is a work in progress. In the area of natural capital, we conduct TNFD assessments, use IBAT to assess biodiversity risks, utilise tools such as biodiversity indices in collaboration with ETH Zurich, and measure and value, where possible, the ecosystem services that provide natural capital at our sites. By monitoring the availability and value of ecosystem services over time, changes in risks to nature and biodiversity can be identified, as well as opportunities for improvement.

Roelofs: ‘We have researched (bio)data suppliers and methodology providers. The correlation in results between these providers was extremely low. We already knew this was the case for climate, but now we are seeing it for biodiversity too. That is shocking.“

Trip: 'I think we know enough to identify sectors and companies that cause a lot of damage. Waiting for perfect data is an excuse we cannot use to do nothing now.”

Peppelenbos: 'Indeed. Follow the TNFD definitions: these determine the priority sectors and the core topics for each sector. We have enough (proxy) data to make the analysis. Take mining, for example, a sector with an enormous impact. We can measure water, waste, emissions, recycling, assets in vulnerable areas and risks associated with tailings dams. That doesn't cover everything, but it's enough to differentiate between companies and build portfolios. Nature is complex, but let's not make it unnecessarily complicated.'

Kamphuis: ‘You can use reporting, policy and performance to steer various biodiversity-related themes, such as water or deforestation. The Financial Biodiversity Foundation provides helpful guidelines for setting portfolio targets. Because biodiversity touches on many different themes, it is important to prioritise these themes in the portfolio, also with a view to maintaining the desired risk-return profile.

Trip: ‘In public markets, it is mainly about ‘less harm’, although there are positive exceptions. Just be honest that you can claim limited direct positive impact there, otherwise the concept of impact becomes diluted. In private markets, there is a much greater chance of actually “doing good”. But then you come to the question: is it just about financial return, or a broader understanding of value? Perhaps there are investments that are less financially profitable but yield a lot socially. Do we do that as the financial sector, or does the government do it? Or do we do it together, with a “shadow price/return” alongside financial return?

Poujade: 'At the company level, we can already measure idiosyncratic risk reasonably well; there is even convergence between some data providers. Difficult topics – such as chemicals, plastics and oceans – still require a lot of qualitative analysis. There are data gaps. And systemic risks (tipping points) are difficult to translate into company valuations. For example, what is the impact of the savannisation of the Amazon zone on hydro, real estate, agriculture, and so on? We lack macro scenarios for this.

Peppelenbos: ‘People are working on short-term scenarios for physical nature and climate risks within the investment horizon. Some also model tipping points. We are still in the early stages with these “new generation” scenarios, but we are getting there.

Roelofs: “A Dutch professor recently published a paper on incorporating nature events into valuations, discount rates, cash flows and so on. It's interesting to see how that can be built in.”

Miller: ‘We are doing something similar in the area of climate change and nature loss. We see it as a megatrend to be included in asset allocation, alongside other important structural trends such as the ageing population.’

Roelofs: 'There is a paradox. On the one hand, as investors, we believe that the greatest impact can be achieved primarily in the private markets. In terms of biodiversity, I think that is broadly the case, for reasons of additionality, measurability, materiality, and so on. But in the long term, the greatest leverage may lie with large listed companies: their potential to do something about the destruction of nature is phenomenal. I would like the CSRD to be clearer about this.’

Trip: ‘There is enormous potential there, but influencing them is difficult. In public markets, you have exclusion and engagement. The problem is that we are often not numerous enough to really change decision-making. There is a lack of majority, and also a lack of legislation. In this area, we need to change the large multinationals.
 

It's all about credibility. Lean on best practices and standards and build the most credible product for the asset class in question.

 
Kamphuis: ‘The TNFD nature transition plans provide useful guidelines for assessing concrete steps taken by issuers in implementing their biodiversity strategy. It is then important to take a critical look at the financial details of the transition plans, as with climate, such as Capex, Opex and R&D budget. This helps to distinguish between frontrunners and laggards in the portfolio.’

Trip: ‘But then enough shareholders have to vote in favour. The risks must be clear and financially attractive. The science is already there, so what is stopping shareholders?’

Miller: ‘I agree that engagement is often the biggest lever for many portfolios. Things are also happening in the area of regulation, for example in the United Kingdom, where a consultation is underway on transition plans in the areas of both nature and climate. And fixed income markets are underestimated as a way to scale up the direct and measurable impact in public markets. There are huge opportunities there alongside private assets.’

Poujade: 'With regard to capital expenditure, it would be very useful to have more information in order to be able to distinguish between companies. Sometimes companies do not seem very proactive in reducing their biodiversity impact. That is to say, they take few active steps to limit the negative impact of their supply chain. But if you look at their capital expenditure and investments, the reality may be different. To succeed in their transition, companies must look for the potential business case. For a fast food restaurant, for example, this means finding out whether customers will accept shorter chips than usual, or using potato varieties that require fewer fungicides. Win-win situations exist, but how many are there?
 

Many biodiversity hotspots are located in emerging markets. We are seeing more interest from pension funds in investigating these markets for their impact potential.

 
When making biodiversity-focused investments, do you distinguish between projects aimed at “protection”, “maintenance” or “restoration” of nature?

Roelofs: 'Right now, mainly protection, restoration in the short term and ultimately everything at once. We often talk about land and air, but too little about the sea: fishing, oceans, water pollution, plastics. The destruction is happening at an alarming rate. Let's first stop what is going wrong. The maritime treaties exist, but enforcement in “free” areas is lacking. We must use public and pension capital to halt the loss of biodiversity.'

Miller: 'We distinguish between protection and restoration. To build on this, we also invest in the maritime sector with clear KPIs, for example through blue bonds. Our experience shows that success requires an approach involving multiple stakeholders, such as the fishing industry, governments and NGOs, and that putting it into practice can also take time.

De Jongh: ‘To get things done, it can also help to set a good example. Just do it, start small, make it visible and share it with lots of people. What also helps is explaining biodiversity in recognisable terms. It's nature, it's swimming in the sea, it's healthy air. Nobody is against that. Share it with the media too, for example the local newspaper and via LinkedIn. Setting a good example encourages others to follow suit. “

Poujade: 'Consider the health aspect as well. Health is a powerful lever. In France, there has been a lot of fuss about the mercury content in tuna. Some French cities now prohibit the consumption of tuna in school canteens. Awareness of health can increase awareness of biodiversity protection.”

Trip: “Unfortunately, 'health” has rarely deterred or motivated companies, even when human lives are at stake. PFAS and microplastics are everywhere: fish from the Westerschelde, for example, are no longer safe for consumption. I hope that health reasons will motivate people to do something, but as long as this is not financially valued or otherwise standardised, I have little hope.'

Poujade: 'Then it has to come from consumers and stakeholders and be reflected in companies. Local investment also helps; people recognise ecosystems and feel a sense of ownership.

How do you make nature measurable at the level of the issuer or security, i.e. relevant to investment decisions?

Peppelenbos: 'We look at the exposure, performance and mitigation of issuers. The raw data changes from one year to the next. But if you rank companies by efficiency, if you look at the trends of each company over three years, you start to see patterns and the data becomes more stable. Datasets are improving rapidly; we enrich them with AI. This gives you a good indication of the frontrunners and laggards, which you can use when putting together a portfolio.'

Kamphuis: 'In making nature measurable, we distinguish five drivers of biodiversity loss and try to map the impact of the issuer for each of these drivers, insofar as it is material to the company. Although data quality and availability have improved enormously in recent years, we see that for some impact drivers, such as pollution, the quality of the data still lags behind and there is still no agreement on transition paths. This is certainly no excuse for not taking action. For other drivers, such as land and water use, sufficient information is available to identify frontrunners and laggards, and setting portfolio targets can be explored. Transparency among data providers and the lack of value chain information remains an issue, and for biodiversity we prefer to use as much raw data as possible and less overarching ESG scores.

Miller: ‘Good measurement is expensive. We distinguish between sustainable timber/farmland strategies and Nature-based Solutions impact strategies. In both cases, measurement is part of how we invest.

Poujade: ‘In our forestry assets, we are cautious in claiming positive impact: the baseline and lead time are crucial, as is soil in agriculture. We reserve budget for mitigation and protection in the investment model, but asset owners sometimes have to accept that the IRR could be slightly lower if you want to measure real impact.’

Kamphuis: 'We are also interested in forestry investments that focus on partial or complete restoration of forest ecosystems, which means that the claim of positive impact can be better substantiated than with regular forestry investments. Ideally, you want to align impact monitoring as closely as possible with current scientific methods. This is costly and time-consuming, but necessary. Are we, as investors, willing to pay for this?’

Trip: ‘Biodiversity conservation or restoration does not always have to yield a financial return. Where it does, it is a suitable investment for institutional investors. If not, the government should play a role in this.’

Peppelenbos: “To give an example: a private debt fund provides loans to agricultural companies in biodiversity-rich areas at risk of deforestation. The loan includes KPIs for forest conservation or restoration at favourable, long maturities and with strict defaults on environmental KPIs. This works, and the portfolio is performing well.”

Miller: ‘Restoration also leads to carbon removal credits, but it can take longer to access them than if you had immediate access to avoidance credits. The IRR dynamics can change. We can achieve a similar result in public markets, such as the Amazon reforestation bond, where the payoff is directly linked to removal credits, and we have also added biodiversity KPIs.

Biodiversity hotspots are often located in emerging markets. Should institutional investors be more willing to invest in those markets?

Kamphuis: ‘Many biodiversity hotspots are indeed located in emerging markets, and we are certainly seeing more interest from pension funds in investigating these markets for their impact potential. Ultimately, this does require a significant adjustment to current products and mandates. People need to be prepared to do that. However, this could mean that it comes at the expense of the risk budget of another product and the associated impact. I am in favour of jointly exploring innovative instruments and looking at which factors in the design can provide sufficient comfort for institutional investors. That said, there is also an urgent need to restore biodiversity in developed markets.’
 

Our experience shows that success requires an approach involving multiple stakeholders, and that putting it into practice can also take time and money

 
Miller: ‘It’s an important issue. Many people say they want to have an impact in emerging markets, but many investors do not allocate capital there. Of course, there are currency risks and other factors that influence the ability of institutional investors to invest capital in emerging markets. That is precisely where capital is most needed.’

Poujade: ‘From a risk perspective, the profile in emerging markets is of course different, but even in developed markets, the loss of biodiversity over the past centuries has been so great that there is much to be done. Just look at the species in Europe that are disappearing, and we are talking about very ‘common’ species. Local strategies for local asset owners help because of their proximity and visibility.

Kamphuis: ‘And that will also resonate with pension fund participants who prefer investments where the positive impact is visible locally.’

There is scalability to exploit opportunities. What opportunities do you see for scaling up the market?

Miller: 'I come back to fixed-income investments, because I think they are very undervalued as an opportunity to scale up – for example, with outcome bonds, debt conversions and use-of-proceeds bonds in general. Everyone has a fixed income allocation. If everyone allocates a portion to such instruments, you can quickly mobilise a lot of capital. And, of course, direct natural capital allocations (NBS, Nature-based Solutions) for impact, diversification, income and value appreciation are very interesting as a portfolio allocation, which is still growing among investors.’

Peppelenbos: “Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Work with the current data and start with transition investments.”

Poujade: 'It's quite paradoxical. We have seen announcements in the market of huge biodiversity funds. But if you disregard outcome bonds and blended finance, regular fixed-income instruments are generally not the purest for biodiversity. The highest purity is more often found in private assets.'

Miller: 'By fixed income, I mean precisely those impact/outcome instruments and debt conversion projects. I think there are many opportunities there that we should be doing more with. We still don't see many investors participating in these deals and allocating capital. There are significant opportunities here if we really want to make an impact. We need to continue building the project pipeline and ensure that the KPIs are met."

Poujade: ‘I agree. So sustainable forestry, sustainable agriculture and ecosystem restoration. When it comes to outcome bonds, I think it's still a struggle because the complexity of these types of deals is still very high, but they are indeed interesting.’

Roelofs: “I think regenerative agriculture has the greatest potential for scalability, however counterintuitive that may sound. With smart water management, fewer pesticides and efficient crop rotation, for example, you can improve soil health and biodiversity without worse financial outcomes, i.e. with the same financial return.”

Trip: “It's mainly about the long term. Transition is difficult and requires upfront investments, but in the long term it certainly has added value.”

De Jongh: “In terms of scalability in real estate, we are close: pilots at two locations and three projects in new construction. The next step is measurement. We are working with scientific institutes. In two years” time, we want to have a good method that can be applied across the portfolio. That is the part that concerns the existing built environment. There are still bigger steps to be taken for the value chains in construction, but this is essential to protect biodiversity worldwide. Think of the loss of biodiversity caused by the production of building materials and packaging materials (often plastic).

Any closing remarks?

Trip: “The biggest opportunity is that we realise we are dependent on nature. Our pensions are worth little without nature and biodiversity. We need to appreciate more than just the financial side and look at integrated value.”

Kamphuis: 'However urgent , it is good to ask external managers questions about monitoring and transparency. We must ensure that we make the right investment decisions, given the limited time we have to restore biodiversity, and be careful not to label an investment as ‘biodiversity’ too quickly. This is not always easy with a complex issue such as biodiversity. More cooperation is therefore needed between the financial sector and the scientific community.