6 October 2025 – A primer by CISL and A-Track partners examines what financial institutions can already do – today – to scale action on nature
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About
Nature (positive) finance is often narrowly perceived only as nature conservation finance, or ‘financing green’ with low financial returns, making it unsuitable and unattractive for private commercial capital at scale.
In this primer, we show how nature recovery finance or ‘greening finance’ to avoid and minimise harm to nature, as well as restoring nature to no net loss, can happen today and at scale with existing private commercial capital, through the everyday actions of financiers. The primer identifies one prerequisite step and four levers of change that financial institutions can use to achieve this – illustrated with concrete, real-life examples of them already in use:
The cumulative positive effects from incremental improvements are expected to be significant and widespread due to the potential of greening finance to scale up quickly. Our intention is that practitioners, equipped with this primer, will be inspired and empowered to act for nature today through mainstream finance practice, whether working in a bank, investment firm or insurance company.
Purpose of this primer and intended audience
The primary audience for this primer is practitioners in financial institutions, with concrete examples from across the sector (banks, investors, insurers). It assumes no specific level of maturity on institutions’ journey toward nature-positive outcomes. The examples are not always best practice; they illustrate what institutions are doing now, rather than what they could or should do in theory. The primer also points to existing literature, case studies, and pilots where relevant. Our goal is that these real-world examples complement existing resources and inspire practitioners to act today. Policymakers, academics, and solution providers may also find the primer useful to inform their work in regulation, methods, capacity-building, and data provision.
Citing this report
University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Capitals Coalition, Tecnalia , Oppla, UNEP-WCMC, WBCSD. (2025). Scaling Finance for Nature: A primer on what financial institutions are doing today. A-Track. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
