Investing in Nature – The next frontier? Lessons from the Blue Earth Summit 2025
By Christian Polman, 20 October 2025
At a time when global headlines are dominated by ecological tipping points, environmental disasters and extreme geopolitical turbulence, this year’s Blue Earth Summit provided a much-needed relief to boost optimism by bringing the Impact Ecosystem together, to unveil and promote novel solutions and innovations to help resolve our climate, social, and ecological challenges.
For those of us navigating the intersection of capital and climate, the message was unequivocal: nature is no longer a side concern—it is the system that underpins them all. We urgently need to recognise its value and invest in solutions to reverse the path we’re on leading to its destruction.
From high finance to polar expeditions, and between pitch sessions and side meetings, the main session speakers painted a picture not of despair, but of profound opportunity—to reshape our investment strategies, our economic frameworks, and the very way we define value.
Here are four major insights from the summit that we think are relevant for impact investors to provoke ecological thinking and urgent action.
1. Nature Has Value—And It’s Time We Start Pricing It Properly
Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, opened with a radical yet necessary question: What is the value of nature?
His argument cut through the usual environmental platitudes. Our GDP-focused economic system, he said, is not just ignoring nature—it’s actively liquidating it. We’re extracting short-term profits while externalising the costs, failing to account for the ecological foundations on which all economic activity rests.
“The system is headed for collapse,” he warned. But within this stark reality lies a transformative opportunity: to build a new model of growth—one that is sustainable, circular, regenerative, and restorative.
Juniper’s call is not just moral or aesthetic—though he acknowledged our deep spiritual and emotional connection to nature. It is fundamentally economic. If we can assign spiritual value to nature, why can’t we assign economic value too? This shift could unlock new forms of protection, new policy incentives, and new markets.
Enter impact investing. Enter nature as the next asset class.
2. We Only Need to Shift 2% of Global Capital to Change Everything
Oliver Gregson, CEO of Wealth Management at Schroders, brought the raw financial firepower to back Juniper’s vision. The global financial markets represent $271 trillion. Just $5–7 trillion of investment each year, or 2–3%, would be enough to mitigate climate change and potentially even meet the goals as set out in the UN SDGs by 2030.
And we’re getting closer than many realise.
Impact investing – as defined by the GIIN – is growing at 20% per annum, now outperforming mainstream financial markets. Although all investments have an impact whether we measure it or not, every day, $1.6 trillion of capital is crossing the tipping point from intention to action. 4x this again and we could reach a tipping point in climate and nature finance with enormous impacts.
Yet the urgency is building. Gregson was clear: mitigation is no longer enough. Climate goals are slipping out of reach. Adaptation is essential. That means capital must flow not only to reduce emissions but to fortify food systems, restore biodiversity, and future-proof entire economies.
Consider this: 75% of our global crops rely on pollinators to some extent, and some of our favourite foods – such as cocoa beans – are fully dependent on them (Ritchie). A world without pollinators would mean a world without chocolate. Never mind the critically negative impacts of the significant declines in healthy soils, largely destroyed by chemical farming practices. As natural systems face collapse, food security for 10 billion people by 2050 is at risk. To avert crisis, capital must take a lead in reversing this decline.
Nature must be recognised not as a cause to donate to, but as a high-performance asset class with inherent risk-reduction, value-creation, and long-term resilience baked in.
And as Gregson’s parting quote reminded us:
“No one can solve every problem, but everyone can solve some problems.”
For investors, this is an empowering mandate. Your capital can do 27x more than your lifestyle alone. Use it.
3. From Extractive to Stellar: A Systemic Shift is Inevitable
If Tony Juniper presented the “why,” and Oliver Gregson the “how,” then James Arbib, co-founder of RethinkX and author of Stellar, offered the “what next.”
He laid out a compelling vision of what he calls the Stellar world—a systemic leap from extractive to regenerative models, powered by exponential technologies and new organising principles.
For millennia, human progress has been driven by consumption—burning energy, extracting value, accumulating ownership. But a Stellar world flips this script. It’s about creating abundance sustainably, in ways that liberate us from destructive practices.
This change demands a mindset shift, new governance models, new ownership paradigms, and a blank-page approach. Legacy thinking, Arbib argued, is a liability. Systems designed for scarcity and extraction won’t serve us in a world built on renewable energy, open data, decentralised finance, and regenerative agriculture.
The transition is already underway. The only question for investors is: will you be part of the front-runners—or the laggards left behind?
This is not just about returns, it’s also about survival.
4. The Frontlines Are Melting Beneath Our Feet
The final highlight to share is from explorer Nick Hollis, who brought us back to the visceral reality of climate change. A veteran of the world’s most extreme environments, Hollis offered a poignant reflection from a recent failed expedition:
“I used to ski across the North Pole. Today, I’ve had to abort missions—the ice simply isn’t thick enough anymore.”
His message was clear: this isn’t theoretical. Decades of polar and mountain expeditions have given him a front-row seat to Earth’s accelerating changes. From Kilimanjaro’s retreating glaciers to the Arctic’s disappearing permafrost, the warnings are not abstract—they are happening now, and they are starkly measurable.
For impact investors, his stories are a striking reminder that capital is not just an economic tool—it is a time machine. What we fund today shapes the world our children inherit tomorrow.
What Now?
From our perspective, the key takeaways were clear:
- The old model—GDP-maximising, extractive, nature-blind—is dying.
- The new model—circular, regenerative, post-carbon—is arriving.
- Investors, and the innovations they support, are the bridge between these two worlds.
We don’t need to fund everything. But we must fund the right things. From nature-based solutions and resilient food systems to carbon markets, circular technologies, and Stellar-era infrastructure—capital allocation is the survival lever of our time.
This is not philanthropy. This is risk management, value creation, and legacy shaping—all in one. The returns are not just financial. They are ecological, societal, and civilisational.
So let’s take out that blank sheet of paper and write a different future.
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