A rigorous funding approach designed for how nature-based climate solutions actually work — collective, long-horizon, and at landscape scale. Contribution capital can be an alternative or complement to carbon and biodiversity credits.
Corporate sustainability teams face a dilemma. Voluntary carbon markets remain mired in credibility problems, yet companies still have reasons to fund climate action beyond their own value chains. Science-Based Targets initiative guidance on Beyond Value Chain Mitigation calls for significant investment in climate solutions—but the dominant instrument for doing so, the carbon credit, was designed for a different purpose and carries growing reputational and integrity risk.
At the same time, biodiversity commitments under frameworks like the Global Biodiversity Framework and TNFD are creating new obligations that credit markets are not equipped to serve.
Contribution capital addresses both.
Contribution capital is funding provided to credible climate and nature programs, linked to rigorous measurement, where funders make transparent claims about what their funding enabled—without asserting that outcomes offset or neutralize their own emissions.
This is not unstructured philanthropy. Contribution claims can be rigorous, verified, and audited. The difference is that the rigor serves transparency about real-world outcomes rather than the fiction of fungible emission units.
A company deploying contribution capital can truthfully say: we funded this work, through this intermediary, under this governance, and here is what it achieved. Multiple contributors can claim participation in the same outcome—proportionally, transparently, and without conflict. This reflects how landscape outcomes are actually produced: through collective action over time.
The contribution claims ladder provides a graduated accountability framework. Claims strengthen as evidence accumulates—from funding deployed, through activities verified, to outcomes measured. This solves a critical timing problem: companies can make defensible claims from the moment of disbursement, rather than waiting years for verified outcomes.
Each claim specifies its evidence level and timeframe. The ladder never produces an offset claim—even at the highest rung, the framing is ‘contributed to,’ not ‘neutralized.’
Nature-based climate solutions could deliver 20–30% of cost-effective global mitigation. They are not scaling. The binding constraint is not technical capacity—it is the funding layer.
Existing mechanisms each cover part of the picture. Donor grants fund early-stage governance and capacity but are episodic and short-cycle. Carbon finance funds measurable outcomes but systematically underfunds the enabling conditions that determine whether outcomes endure. Blended finance requires revenue visibility that the unfunded foundations are supposed to create.
The result is a structural gap. Capital concentrates on measurable outcomes while tenure, governance, coordination, and long-term stewardship remain chronically underfunded—even though these are the layers that determine whether any funding achieves durable results.
Contribution capital fills this gap. Because it is not seeking financial returns or tradable credits, it can fund whichever part of the value chain is the binding constraint at any given moment. Because claims are non-exclusive, multiple funders can support the same initiative without accounting conflicts. Because it is managed through intermediaries with long-term presence, it can stay engaged through the transitions that landscape-scale conservation demands.
Contribution capital is not either/or with carbon credits. A company might purchase credits for established projects and deploy contribution capital for landscape-level initiatives. The two serve different strategic purposes within the same BVCM commitment. For biodiversity, contribution capital may be the more natural fit from the start, since biodiversity credit markets remain nascent and demand drivers are unclear.
Companies using contribution capital are not making a weaker claim. They are making a more accurate one—one that reflects shared causality and positions them as participants in outcomes far larger than any single actor could achieve alone.
For contribution capital to work at scale, the field needs shared infrastructure: claims standards, verification frameworks, accredited intermediaries, and a registry that provides transparency without requiring the overhead of credit markets. This is field-building work, and it is a core part of what we do.
One of contribution capital’s great strengths is that it lets us test actual demand now. We do not need to build an entire system before funders can engage. Companies can deploy contribution capital today, through existing vehicles, while the broader system matures around them.
Corporate advisory. We work with companies to develop contribution-based strategies for BVCM and biodiversity—aligned with SBTi, VCMI, and TNFD guidance. Services include contribution capital strategy and portfolio design, claims frameworks and reporting, co-investment agreement design, greenwashing risk management, and internal business case development for leadership.
System building. We develop the shared foundations that make contribution capital credible and scalable—claims standards, governance frameworks, and the connective infrastructure between corporate funders and landscape initiatives.
