The question hanging over the 2026 Concave Summit at London Climate Action Week on “Nature, Capital, Cities – Investing for Resilience” was both simple and urgent: We know what needs to be solved. We have the technologies. We have the capital. So what’s required to scale the most promising solutions to our planetary crises?
What emerged throughout the day—co-hosted by EthicalFin, the Earthshot Prize, BNP Paribas, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and 100×100 at 180 Strand in London—was something more nuanced than any single constraint. It was a map of key opportunities to drive meaningful progress in ensure a more regenerative, biodiverse, fair, and sustainable future for our planet.
The Ocean Opportunity: At a Tipping Point
The day opened with ocean conservation and investment, and the data was simultaneously sobering and hopeful. We’ve protected 10% of the ocean, with a 30% protection target by 2030. That sounds distant—but reaching even 20% would represent extraordinary progress compared to where we stood a decade ago.
The ocean is a $25 trillion natural capital opportunity. The blue economy is already a $3 trillion industry today—and critically, 80% of it consists of small and medium enterprises hungry for patient capital to become better stewards of marine resources. The puzzle pieces for positive tipping points are now in place: we have better measurement for ocean carbon and biodiversity, and the High Seas Treaty provides legal certainty. What’s needed now is capital, implementation, and political will.
One potentially overlooked opportunity is in the continental shelf mud, which contains massive carbon stores. Protecting these areas from dredging and bottom trawling could create significant carbon additionality while rebuilding fisheries. It’s the kind of elegant solution—conservation and economic benefit aligned—that the market hasn’t yet fully valued.
From Vision to Venture: The Founder Ecosystem
What energised the room were the founders and entrepreneurs demonstrating that climate solutions aren’t theoretical. They’re here, they are scalable, and they’re looking for capital.
Temperate is reducing cooling energy demand by 95% through radiative cooling technology that beams heat directly into space. Cooling will represent 20% of energy consumption by 2035—6x more than data centre demand.
The Great Bubble Barrier presented a clever solution that prevents plastic pollution from entering oceans at the source while allowing boats and fish to navigate our rivers uninterrupted. Abalobi cultivates thriving, equitable small-scale fishing communities through financial inclusion and data-driven fisheries rebuilding. Greenspot transforms farm waste into food ingredients through fermentation. S4C Technologies converts farm losses into food-ingredients while supporting women entrepreneurs. Neocrete solves concrete’s massive carbon footprint with sustainable alternatives.
On the nature-based solutions and carbon removals side, Mombak represents proof that nature-based solutions can achieve infrastructure scale. As one of the world’s leading carbon removal suppliers, Mombak has secured offtakes for over 1.8 million tonnes, with buyers including Google, McKinsey, and Microsoft. Their Amazonian reforestation project was the first selected under the Symbiosis Coalition’s inaugural RFP, with coalition members purchasing 215,000 tonnes of carbon removal.
Rainforest Builder tackles one of the climate crisis’s most critical gaps: reforestation at scale across Africa’s degraded rainforest regions. Their “land sparing” methodology—intensively restoring project areas to natural forest while simultaneously increasing agricultural yields on adjacent lands—solves the false choice between conservation and development.
These solutions are deployable. They’re achieving scale. They also need capital partners who understand that impact and returns aren’t mutually exclusive.
Family Offices as Catalysts: Patient Capital with Purpose
But how do you actually fund this ecosystem? EthicalFin’s “Patient Capital with Purpose” panel, featuring family office investors and impact ecosystem builders, offered a crucial perspective: family offices aren’t just another source of capital—they’re structurally different from institutional investors in ways that matter enormously for climate solutions.
Family offices operate across multigenerational time horizons. They can invest in forest restoration that takes decades to mature. They can back carbon removal technologies with uncertain but potentially transformative upside. They can weather short-term volatility because their success isn’t defined by quarterly earnings targets.
But perhaps more importantly, they can ask questions institutional capital cannot: What does a good society mean? What should our capital strengthen? With $84 trillion passing to heirs by 2045—a transfer significantly driven by women inheriting wealth—family offices have an opportunity to reorient capital around these questions.
And the data suggests they will. Research shows women prefer values-based investing at significantly higher rates than men. Two-thirds of wealth being inherited by 2045 will pass to women. Statistically, women are more likely to invest for impact. This isn’t sentiment—it’s demographic reality reshaping capital flows.
Yet family offices investing explicitly for impact remain a small minority. The barriers are real: lack of playbooks, complexity in measuring impact, limited deal flow. But the barriers are falling. The Impact Investing Institute’s work on place-based investing exemplifies this—developing frameworks that give family offices confidence to deploy capital in community-specific climate and nature solutions. As evidence accumulates and next-generation wealth stewards come into decision-making power, more capital moves.
Building at Scale: Venture Models for Systems Change
Two presentations crystallized how climate entrepreneurship is evolving. 100×100, founded by PropertyGuru’s Steve Melhuish, is pursuing an audacious thesis: co-found and scale ventures across energy, agriculture, industry, and buildings in Southeast Asia and India, each targeting $100 million in revenue and 100 megatons of carbon removal.
Their methodology is disciplined. They start with founder alignment with personal ikigai (life purpose), move through rigorous problem-solution validation, and build deliberate scaling pathways for both business and impact. It’s not just “let’s give founders money.” It’s “let’s engineer companies from scratch for scale.”
Carbon13, which has built one of Europe’s most successful climate venture builder programs, offered complementary insights. Their portfolio is 63% female founders—deliberately pursued because diverse teams perform better. They’ve deployed $15 million into early-stage deeptech. But their secret is simpler: they don’t chase hype. They follow impact and customers.
Green hydrogen was declared the savior in 2020, dead by 2023—neither was true. Instead, Carbon13 embeds impact frameworks before ventures are even formed, ensuring founders are aligned with purpose from day one. And they obsess over one principle: “Losers chase investor attention. Winners are embedded with industrial buyers.”
Regenerative Places: Vision Meets Infrastructure
The day also highlighted regenerative city development as a critical investment category. Creating regenerative places requires more than great individual projects. You need shared vision, clear resilience frameworks, innovative financing mechanisms, and ways to scale solutions. Organizations like the UK Green Building Council are working to connect these pieces—turning insight into tangible action.
This matters because cities will house 68% of humanity by 2050. Urban climate solutions won’t be niche. They’ll be systemic. Investors who understand how to deploy capital in regenerative city development will be positioned for both impact and return.
The Convergence
What emerged most clearly from Concave Summit 2026 is that the infrastructure for scaling climate solutions is coming into focus. Patient capital from family offices. Clear impact frameworks. Measurement standards for carbon and biodiversity. A new generation of founders and venture builders. Ocean protection frameworks with legal certainty. Startup solutions achieving scale.
The pieces are there. What’s needed now is for more investors to recognise that this convergence represents the investment opportunity of the century. Not because returns will be extraordinary—though many will be. But because the alternative to investing in systems change is instability, ecosystem collapse, and ultimately, the hollowing out of the very systems on which all wealth depends.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in nature and climate solutions. It’s whether you can afford not to.
The Concave Summit on “Nature, Capital, Cities – Investing for Resilience” took place on June 25, 2026, co-hosted by EthicalFin, the Earthshot Prize, BNP Paribas, and the Commonwealth Secretariat. EthicalFin hosted the “Patient Capital with Purpose” panel exploring how family offices mobilise capital for impact, which we’ve summarised here. You can read our full recap of London Climate Action Week recap here.
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