Our greatest ally in solving climate change and biodiversity loss is Earth itself. Nature can provide solutions – but it needs a helping hand.

This past Earth Day marked the start of a Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a UN-led initiative that will officially launch on World Environment Day. The UN Decade is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world – and adds more weight to the shoulders of private sector leaders, who are increasingly expected to be good stewards of nature conservation.

Investors and businesses have taken note. Ahead of Earth Day, Apple launched a US$200 million Restore Fund to accelerate natural solutions to climate change. Three American banks – JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America – pledged a collective US$4.5 trillion in environmental financing by 2030.

These commitments were a crucial addition to the Earth Day climate action summit held by U.S President Joe Biden, where he pledged to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 52% by 2030, a doubling of the previous target. Conservation is also high on the agenda of the Biden administration, which is expected to release its strategy for the recent executive order to conserve at least 30% of the nation’s lands and oceans by 2030. 

Investors need not wait for government regulation in order to invest in the protection and enhancement of nature. Today, there is a growing number of innovative finance models that yield environmental and social impacts – and financial returns. The latest commitments from some of the titans of finance reinforce that what is good for business can also be good for the planet. 

Read on to find out more!

Best wishes,

The CPIC Secretariat

Global extinction risk could be reduced by 56% through the restoration of threatened species’ habitats, according to a recent paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. These results were generated using the new Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric, developed by the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Post-2020 Task Force, hosted by the University of Newcastle. 

The metric assesses the relative contribution of different pressures to the extinction risk of threatened species on IUCN's Red List. STAR also helps determine where conservation efforts could have the highest impact: the study by Nature Ecology & Evolution found that interventions in five mega-diverse countries could reduce global extinction risk by almost a third.

For the first time, a metric allows business, governments and civil society to assess their potential contributions to global species extinction, and can be used to calculate national, regional, sector-based, or institution-specific targets. From a risk perspective, the integration of the STAR metric into financial decisions could quickly identify any investment that has a negative impact on biodiversity.

Apple, together with partners Conservation International and Goldman Sachs, announced the launch of a novel US$200 million "Restore Fund". The Fund will aim to remove at least 1 million metric tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year, while demonstrating a viable financial model that can help scale up investment in forest restoration. 

The Fund’s recipients include Kenya-based start-up Komaza, which developed a CPIC investment blueprint on its innovative smallholder forestry business model. CPIC is excited to see Komaza’s model scaled-up in Kenya and beyond!

Here are some upcoming events that CPIC and its members will follow, attend, or present at. For more information, please contact us at the CPIC Secretariat.