Engagements can begin with a funder, a finance vehicle, an intermediary or a landscape organization. The common thread is a difficult funding or finance problem that sits upstream of instrument selection.
Help foundations, public funders, companies and beneficiaries determine where resources can make a consequential difference and how different contributors can work together.
Funding strategy · portfolio design · opportunity assessment · catalytic funding · contributor partnerships
Work with conservation funds, carbon programs, water funds, blended-finance vehicles and other mechanisms to understand what they finance well, what important functions sit outside their economics or mandate, and where complementary funding could strengthen the wider strategy.
Vehicle strategy · complementary capital · funding windows · hybrid approaches · beneficiary funding · public and philanthropic funding
Help landscape initiatives and intermediaries understand the existing funding system, identify binding constraints, turn consequential needs into credible opportunities, and connect them with appropriate contributors and channels.
Funding-system diagnosis · opportunity development · intermediation · diligence · funding channels · evidence and claims
Have a problem that does not fit neatly into one of these categories?
That is often where the work starts.
The approach is easiest to see in real settings. The examples below are drawn from discussions with partners at different stages, from preliminary concepts requiring partner-led co-development to designs in active discussion. None is a running program, and each would be led by the institutions closest to it.
What these examples share is the operating logic: contribution capital funds work that matters for landscape-scale outcomes; existing methods establish the climate and nature importance of that work; funding levels and priorities are set pragmatically by the people closest to the problem; and every funder makes a contribution claim — a claim about its role in measured progress, not ownership of the outcome.
Indigenous territories hold some of the most intact forest, carbon, and biodiversity on the planet, and where Indigenous governance is strong, the territories hold. But the functions that sustain them — planning, surveillance, legal defense, monitoring, cultural continuity, livelihoods, fire management — are interdependent, and poorly served by a project or carbon-credit lens. Resources often do not reach Indigenous institutions at the right scale or with enough autonomy for Indigenous communities.
The co-investment approach: windows built around Indigenous-defined territorial strategies, with trusted rights-holder institutions at the center. Existing methods analyze the climate and nature benefits so contributions are measured and recognized, but market mechanisms do not set the funding levels or priorities. Those are set by territorial plans, institutional capacity, and equity-driven funding levels. Because no funder needs to own a unit of outcome, carbon, biodiversity, and livelihood funders can support the same territorial strategy, each making a contribution claim that describes its role and the evidence.
In cocoa, palm, coffee, and cattle landscapes, a cleaner supply chain for one buyer does not stabilize the surrounding landscape — and the conservation, restoration, fire management, and governance work that would achieve needed results sits outside any investable perimeter and any single procurement budget.
The co-investment approach: a contribution-capital sidecar that rides alongside producer-transition finance, funding the shared landscape conditions the finance vehicle’s mandate cannot reach. The same analytical tools establish what matters for climate and nature. Because contributors are not claiming offsets, the MRV system can be right-sized, and funding levels can be set by what the larger goal requires — a landscape durable enough for the production finance to perform — rather than by per-tonne prices. Carbon, biodiversity, and water funders can support the same stewardship work and make contribution claims against the evidence. The sustainable production finance itself remains financing and carries no contribution claim.
Peru has established mechanisms for funding watershed services, built over years of public and civil-society effort. Watersheds that supply cities and agriculture are under stress, and much of the work that would secure them — upstream conservation, restoration, community stewardship — also carries real climate benefits.
The co-investment approach: rather than standing up carbon projects in the watershed, identify water-program actions that meet the water needs and carry climate benefits, and deploy contribution capital through the mechanisms that already exist. Water outcomes lead – they are more urgent and motivating to key local actors. The climate benefit is analyzed with existing methods and claimed as a contribution — no credits required, no parallel system built. Climate funders join the watershed’s own funding system and strengthen it, rather than building around it. Where REDD+ projects or other mechanisms exist and can be strengthened through contribution capital, this is an additional option.
Any of these can sit inside a jurisdictional program.
The co-investment approach: the jurisdiction measures results at scale — deforestation, restoration, emissions — while contribution capital deploys through the existing mechanisms that fit real needs on the ground: territorial windows, sidecars, water programs. Each is recognized as contributing to the jurisdictional results being measured. This is a robust structure precisely because everyone — public programs, donors, corporate contributors — is making contribution claims against the same measured results, with any credits governed on their own pathway. No one has to own the jurisdictional outcome, so funding is freed to go where the work is.
