Natural capital: the sustainable way to transform private assets
October 03, 2025
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5 min
The depletion of natural capital is progressively recognised as a major physical risk that can impact many activities in multiple sectors. In order to ensure the resilience of supply chains and more generally of the economy, we expect regulators and economic players to integrate nature into their strategies and investment decisions.
What sectors and opportunities are you looking at in natural capital at the moment?
In the field of natural capital, we invest in two main types of activities. First, environmental assets, which consists in supporting nature-based carbon projects that aim at generating high quality carbon credits from reforestation, mangrove restoration, and peatland protection, for instance. Second is sustainable land use, which consists in supporting regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, and agroforestry that aim at delivering food and fiber.
Can you give recent examples of innovative projects you have identified?
In the environmental asset strategy, we have recently supported a project called Imperative Spekboom in South Africa that consists in restoring degraded pastureland by the planting of an endemic species that significantly improve ecosystem services while sequestering carbon.
In the sustainable land use strategy, we support Kennemer Foods in the Philippines that works with thousands of smallholder farmers to develop a sustainable supply chain of cocoa Rainforest Alliance certified, and also protect primary forests.
Why is blended finance an important tool for natural capital investments? What are the recent trends?
As a novel investment theme, especially in emerging markets, natural capital requires some de-risking from public investor to attract and convince private investors to mobilise more capital in the space. As public money is scarce, a blended finance structure, combining this public and private money is a way to improve the value for money of taxpayer money. In recent month, we have seen some decrease of public money providers such as USAID. Nevertheless, many governments, especially from the G7, remain truly committed to blended finance and philanthropy is also joining the effort to mobilise more and more private commercial capital to natural capital and emerging markets.
How do you ensure natural capital mandates from corporates are not greenwashing operations?
As a mission-driven company and impact investor, we pay strong attention to integrity regarding the selection of corporates we work with.
We have integrated high quality criteria to work only with those truly committed to net zero with an alignment with science. When it comes to carbon credits, they have to be used in addition to the emission reduction and not as an alternative.
What are some of the challenges you face when trying to quantify the value of natural capital in private asset investments, and how do you address them?
For decades, the services provided by nature, such as clean air or clean water have not been factored in the economic system. Such market failure is progressively addressed by internalising the positive externalities, as economists would say. For the moment, the most reliable price signals we can observe in the markets are twofold. One, the premium for certification when it comes to production of certified food and fiber through Rainforest Alliance or FSC, for instance. Second is the price of carbon credits that value the high quality nature-based solution implemented on the ground. More incentives and regulatory measures are still required to truly integrate the value of nature in the economic system.
Mirova’s natural capital team has signed partnerships with sustainability-linked organisations like the Rainforest Alliance. What do these partnerships help investors achieve in terms of impact?
Working with certification entities such as Rainforest Alliance or FSC is a way for Mirova to achieve two aspects. One is a proxy for the quality of the underlying project. While they do not replace our due diligence, they give a very good estimate of the quality in terms of environmental and social performance of the project we support. Second, it's a way to identify and source more projects for the funds and deploy the fund with efficiency.
Looking ahead, how do you see the integration of natural capital into investment strategies evolving, and what impact do you think this will have on private markets?
The depletion of natural capital is progressively recognised as a major physical risk that can impact many activities in multiple sectors. In order to ensure the resilience of supply chains and more generally of the economy, we expect regulators and economic players to integrate nature into their strategies and investment decisions. Natural capital can represent a true opportunity for asset owners alongside other asset classes such as infrastructure or private equity. Natural capital can bring interesting diversification potential to investors.
