Restoring nature at scale is crucial for Paris Agreement success

Natural capital and capturing carbon are essential to combat the climate crisis:

• New fintech, Cultivo, launches new way to invest in nature at scale
• Cultivo sets out goal to restore at least 3.5 million hectares of land within next five years
• Founders of Cultivo call upon investors and landowners to utilise nature to protect biodiversity and capture CO2
• Cultivo on a mission to fill the ‘financing gap’ for landowners, enabling restoration

December 15th 2020, California, US: Cultivo, a new way to invest in nature at scale, today launches its service to connect landowners to investors who want to invest in nature-based solutions that help combat the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Over the next five years, Cultivo’s goal will be to deploy 1 billion USD in nature and restore at least 3.5 million hectares of land by financing a diverse range of projects including forests, grasslands, wetlands, and regenerative agriculture.

As the world’s governments scramble to pass legislation and formulate plans to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the importance of natural restoration, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity protection have never been higher.

Commenting on the role of natural climate solutions in the global effort to combat climate change and keep global warming below 1.5˚C *, Dr Manuel Pinuela, Co-Founder and CEO of Cultivo, said: “Nature-based solutions can provide at least 30% of the CO2 mitigation goals by 2030, yet receive only around 3% of the funding allocated to carbon capture. Cultivo's mission is to bridge this funding gap by providing an innovative financing mechanism that connects financial institutions to NGOs and landowners in order to unlock investment into natural capital opportunities that restore nature, protect livelihoods, and deliver healthy financial returns to investors.”

To do this, Cultivo uses proprietary algorithms and remote sensor technologies to identify high quality projects and forecast the natural capital returns. The projects that Cultivo select from around the world are pooled into investment products known as ‘nature generators’. This provides financial institutions with a simple way to invest in projects at scale.

The investment is used to fund sustainable activities such as regenerative grazing or planting trees which in turn generate carbon credits and other offsets that can be sold, providing a return to investors and a long-term reliable income stream to the landowners and local communities.

Commenting specifically on the launch, Co-Founder and CSO, James Clifton, added: “We are beyond excited to launch Cultivo’s platform today, which has been in development for over 18 months. We believe that the key to unlocking investment in nature at scale is to show financial institutions how investing in natural capital can generate financial, natural and social returns – a triple win.”

* https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/