Scaling Finance for Nature: A primer on what financial institutions are doing today
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 shift in mainstream finance. These are illustrated with a series of practical, current, concrete examples from financial institutions and other actors. These examples showcase existing approaches to using these levers of change and highlight their potential for scale.
The cumulative positive effects from incremental improvements have the potential 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.
Victoria Leggett, Co-chair, ILG working group and Senior Advisor to Union Bancaire Privée - " Investors have the power to shift capital away from activities that harm nature. Aligning portfolios with nature-positive outcomes safeguards long-term value and opens new opportunities for growth."
Markus Müller, Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer Sustainability & Global Head of Chief Investment Office, Deutsche Bank - "Recognising borrower dependencies on clean water, healthy soils and biodiversity is part of responsible banking for clients’ long-term financial security. Understanding and acting on nature risk is simply sound financial practice".
Dr Nina Seega, Director, Centre for Sustainable Finance, CISL - "The cost of inaction on nature is rising — and our new report highlights existing tools already used by financial institutions, which can act as levers to reverse that trend. Wider take up of these tools is key to significantly reduce nature loss and build a more resilient global economy". Read her blog post on Forbes.
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.
