Co-Investing in Nature helps funders and initiatives build the mechanisms to move catalytic capital to support large-scale nature-based climate solutions — coordinated around shared objectives, accountable to measured results, and designed for the complexity of working at landscape scale.
Two sources of catalytic capital dominate funding for nature-based climate solutions: donor funding and carbon markets.
Donor funding — from foundations, bilateral agencies, and multilateral institutions — is essential but inherently limited and under constant pressure.
Carbon markets were expected to fill the gap, channeling private capital at scale. But after two decades of development, voluntary carbon markets remain mired in credibility problems and have not yet proven catalytic — too much of the capital they do mobilize is absorbed by transaction infrastructure, verification overhead, and credit generation rather than reaching the landscape initiatives that deliver results.
The building blocks for a better approach already exist: credible initiatives, trusted intermediaries, and a growing base of funders ready to move. What has been missing is the connective infrastructure — the mechanisms that allow multiple funders to co-invest in shared outcomes, with accountability and at scale.
Contribution capital is funding provided to credible climate and nature programs where funders make transparent claims about what their funding enabled—without asserting that outcomes offset their own emissions. It is simultaneously more modest and more ambitious than carbon credits: more modest because it does not claim to neutralize emissions, more ambitious because it describes participation in outcomes far larger than any single company could achieve alone.
For companies navigating Beyond Value Chain Mitigation and biodiversity commitments, contribution capital offers a rigorous, defensible path that does not depend on the offset claim. Building strong foundations for this system—including claims standards, verification frameworks, and trusted intermediaries—is a field-building priority.
Across the tropics, strong landscape and jurisdictional programs are already delivering results—and they are starved of funding. These are not hypothetical. They include jurisdictional REDD+ programs, Indigenous territorial management systems, and multi-stakeholder sustainability compacts. Many have governance structures, monitoring systems, and track records. What they lack is funding that matches their scale and complexity.
Co-investment—the intentional alignment of multiple funding sources around shared outcomes—is how these initiatives actually work. No single funder can achieve landscape-scale results alone. The challenge is to build platforms and funding windows that make co-investment efficient, accountable, and accessible to a wider base of funders.
These two developments are synergistic. Contribution capital from corporate funders can be a major funding source for co-investment in landscape initiatives. Together, they allow us to mobilize more funding and—more importantly—make the pieces of climate finance fit together better. The result is a system where catalytic capital actually catalyzes: it gets the right funding to the right work, and it unlocks follow-on investment.
Co-Investing in Nature is a specialized advisory practice that works across three interconnected areas.
We do not hold or manage funds, broker transactions, issue credits, or certify outcomes. That separation is deliberate—it preserves independence and keeps the practice focused on strategic intelligence, design expertise, and integrity infrastructure.
Co-Investing in Nature is actively seeking aligned funders, partners, and collaborators. If you are working on contribution-based climate finance, Indigenous-led conservation, or jurisdictional approaches—we want to hear from you.
