Investing in Natural Climate Solutions

Colibri is a catalytic capital facility designed to unlock the land use sector’s potential to achieve 37% of the global emissions reductions needed by 2030.

Accelerating and scaling the flow of capital to natural climate solutions.

Private finance has a vital role to play to enable natural climate solutions to play their essential role in supporting the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. But today, mainstream investment in Natural Capital remains largely untapped— worse still, mainstream investment continues to underwrite unsustainable and destructive industrial land-use models.

The urgency

We are facing a triple environmental crisis: quick and dangerous degradation of our atmosphere, soils, and biodiversity which in turn are exacerbating food insecurity, poverty and conflicts

We need to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030.

24 billion tonnes of fertile soil are being lost per year, largely due to unsustainable agriculture practices. If this trend continues, 95% of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050.

Biodiversity loss is driving a mass extinction of species and compromising Earth’s ecological infrastructure and its capacity to meet human needs.

The need for blended finance

  • Investments in natural climate solutions need to triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2050 if we are to meet global climate change, biodiversity and land degradation targets.
  • Blended finance has the potential to leverage private sector investment into nature -positive solutions and help us get to the trillion USD necessary annually to stay below 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.
  • However, only 2% of ODA is spent as blended finance 2 and less than 5% of blended finance invests in natural climate solutions

The opportunity

  • Natural climate solutions provide up to 37% of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius, while addressing biodiversity loss and soil health, and contributing to food security.
  • Yet, less than 5% of blended finance is spent on natural climate solutions.

Theory of Change

Baseline

Very limited private capital investing in natural climate solutions

Inputs

Catalytic capital is aggregated and efficiently allocated

Outputs

Natural climate solutions funds raise and deploy capital from impact investors and institutional investors

Outcome

Private and commercial capital flows to natural climate solutions

Impact

  • Wealth generation in local communities
  • Biodiversity conservation
  • Climate mitigation and adaptation
  • Women empowerment