How to align capital markets to benefit climate and nature

For decades, we have made economic decisions as if the natural resources they depend on were stable, resilient and replaceable. This assumption was never truly accurate, but it was convenient. It enabled us to accelerate growth, externalize costs and ignore risks that lay outside traditional financial metrics.

Today, it is becoming clear that this logic is reaching its limits as it faces the concrete reality in markets, supply chains and business models. In successive editions of its Global Risks Report, the World Economic Forum has demonstrated the rising threats that biodiversity loss, water scarcity and climate risks pose to economic and financial stability.

While short-term geopolitical tensions top near-term concerns in the latest edition, climate and nature have dominated the long-term horizon for nearly a decade. This coexistence will certainly shape our actions, but it is also exposing the structural weakness of our system of living.

Our economic and financial models behave exactly as they were designed, optimizing what is measured and little else. Critically, what is not systematically accounted for, such as our dependence on stable ecosystems, remains undervalued.

The real challenge, therefore, is not awareness but implementation: how do we change the basis of decision-making so that it reflects our present reality? Or put differently, how do we reshape the system so that planetary boundaries are consistently and immediately embedded in every business and economic decision?

The answer begins with a simple but far-reaching insight: respecting planetary boundaries is not an added responsibility; it is a prerequisite for long-term value creation. Optimizing short-term profits without understanding their environmental and social consequences is no longer viable. What matters is systematically integrating the impacts of our actions – environmental, social and economic.

This calls for a radical shift in business and economic decision-making, which actively incorporates the stability of the natural ecosystems on which we depend. It is time to face reality: modern capitalism has enabled significant progress, but it has also produced profound challenges resulting in environmental degradation and social inequality. Preserving it can only mean evolving it.

In practice, this transformation has already begun, albeit unevenly. It is particularly visible in global supply chains. Agricultural commodities such as palm oil or cocoa are no longer viewed solely as cost factors. Their production is intrinsically linked to soil health, water availability and social conditions.

As a result, more sustainable production models are increasingly emerging through partnerships: companies invest in improved farming practices, producers gain access to knowledge and markets, and organizations define and monitor standards.

Such collaboration is complex, but necessary. No single actor can transform these systems alone. Responsibility can no longer be neatly separated – it must be shared across entire value chains.

A similar shift is taking place in how we view nature itself. We treat infrastructure – roads, power grids, communication networks – as critical foundations of economic activity and invest accordingly in their maintenance.

Ecosystems perform comparable functions: forests stabilize climate and soils, wetlands regulate water, and biodiversity underpins long-term productivity. Yet for a long time, they were not valued as such. Only now are companies and financial institutions beginning to systematically assess these dependencies and integrate them into decision-making.

Despite these developments, a central challenge remains as capital still largely follows short-term signals. Investments whose value unfolds over years or decades – such as those in soil health or water infrastructure – struggle to compete. Resilience often becomes visible only once it is lost.

This is where the role of the GAEA (Global Accelerator for Earth Action) becomes critical: a platform that brings together catalytic actors and concrete projects in a way that turns fragmented efforts into coordinated impact on climate and nature.

GAEA mobilizes catalytic capital and capabilities, impact-oriented investments and mainstream financial flows, directing them towards a limited number of initiatives that drive positive tipping points for a sustainable future. So far it has seen $4 billion in capital committed by more than 50 partners.

These so-called “high-leverage opportunities” have the potential to reshape markets or create new sustainable ones. What matters is not only financing, but identifying the right catalytic tools, financial and non-financial, and their coordination to unlock systemic bottlenecks. As such, risks become shared, incentives aligned and partnerships structured to scale. In a fragmented system, catalytic actors and their orchestration is the key lever for meaningful change.

As necessary information is increasingly available, companies understand more clearly how dependent their business models are on stable ecosystems. Data on emissions, water use and biodiversity may not be perfect, but it is sufficient to inform decisions. The bottleneck lies less in knowledge than in the willingness to act on it.

This systemic transition demands a shift in mindset where growth and impact are no longer considered competing objectives but are recognized as increasingly interdependent.

True leadership and future competitive advantage mean accepting uncertainty, moving first and demonstrating that nature-positive credible solutions can be winning business models, building the evidence that turns early bets into industry standards.

Partnerships play a central role in this context not as an abstract ideal, but as an operational necessity. Businesses and governments will have to rely on the expertise and experience of ecosystem specialists. They bring together different interests: return expectations, regulatory requirements and ecological constraints. These tensions cannot be eliminated, but they can be made visible and actively managed. That is precisely where their strength lies.

New financing models further illustrate this dynamic. Impact-oriented, catalytic capital can absorb risks that traditional investors avoid, curbing critical bottlenecks and enabling innovation. At the same time, their necessity highlights the limitations of existing markets.

Ultimately, the transformation of our economic system will not be determined by individual projects, but by our ability to shift these underlying logics. It depends on whether we begin to treat nature for what it is: a fundamental prerequisite for economic activity, whether we direct capital in ways that strengthen long-term stability, and whether we redefine success – not only in terms of short-term results, but in terms of the resilience of the systems on which we depend.

The building blocks for this transformation already exist. They are not perfect, but they demonstrate that change is possible. The real challenge is to make them the new standard.