Co-Investing in Nature is an advisory practice founded by Lex Hovani to strengthen the operational infrastructure for catalytic funding for nature-based climate solutions. The practice works with landscape initiatives, jurisdictional programs, Indigenous institutions, finance vehicles, foundations, and bilateral programs that need specialist support on diagnostic analysis, mechanism design, and field-building work.
The next phase of nature finance will depend on systems that steer funding to support the governance, stewardship, monitoring, and institutional capacity required for durable outcomes. This will require deploying different sources of capital in appropriate ways to play suitable roles. The practice works with partners ready to build those systems.
Lex Hovani founded Co-Investing in Nature after seeing the same pattern across many landscape and jurisdictional initiatives: the technical case for nature-based climate solutions was often strong, but the funding architecture was too fragmented, too instrument-led, or too weakly connected to the systems that actually deliver outcomes.
Lex has spent more than two decades working across jurisdictional sustainability programs, Indigenous territorial management, watershed restoration, and the design of catalytic funding mechanisms. He spent 14 years supporting co-creation of jurisdictional REDD+ and sustainable landscapes programs with The Nature Conservancy, including 6 years based in Indonesia leading development of the Berau and East Kalimantan Programs. He served as Senior Advisor for Sustainable Landscapes at USAID, deploying catalytic funding for carbon finance and sustainable land management and advising in-country staff. Lex has extended engagement across jurisdictional REDD+ programs, corporate sustainability standards, forestry investing, and Indigenous conservation partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.
He holds dual master’s degrees from the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of the Environment and is a Switzer Foundation Fellow. He is based in Washington, DC.
lexhovani@coinvesting.earth | coinvesting.earth
The practice operates through two legal vehicles, each matched to the kind of work it carries.
COIN, LLC (Washington, DC) carries commercial consulting, fee-for-service engagements, sub-contracting, design work, and retained advisory.
Nature Data Lab under One Earth Philanthropy’s fiscal sponsorship carries grant-funded field-building work, including frameworks, working memos, marquee publications, and open-source infrastructure.
This separation is deliberate. It preserves independence, keeps commercial advisory and pre-competitive field-building from confusing one another, and lets each stream operate under governance appropriate to its role.
Lex Hovani, Founder
lexhovani@coinvesting.earth
coinvesting.earth
