The Building Bridges Foundation was my partner for my applied research project and so BB26 was an opportunity for me to engage with stakeholders across sustainable finance, climate policy and international development. I was eager to explore what is needed to bring in more private capital into the international development space. Though this blog touches more on nature, some of my takeaways resonates with other thematic areas covered during the conference.

Day one was very engaging and I gathered a lot drawing from the insights shared by an indigenous community leader from the Amazon region. The message was clear; treating indigenous people and local communities (IPLC) merely as passive project beneficiaries often results in failed financial structures. Result-oriented capital deployment requires respecting existing native political governance structures and systems. To ensure long-term sustainability, there should be direct financial flow to legal indigenous territorial entities and IPLC’s should be furnished with sufficient and transparent information to enable them make informed decisions on matters that affect their communities.

It was revealing to know that more than 50% of global gross domestic product (to the tune of $44 trillion) depends on strong ecosystems, yet, there is an annual biodiversity financing deficit of $700 billion. However, the solution lies in mobilising public catalytic capital (such as grants, first-loss capital and guarantees) to bear the structural risks that commercial lenders cannot take. Public catalytic capital can absorb the upfront costs of legal prototyping, fee structuring and financial engineering and also build robust measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) frameworks that establish verified baseline metrics for investors.

In the blue economy space, my takeaway was that, early stage ocean and natural capital ventures encounter severe financing gaps when transitioning from proof-of-concept to commercial scale. It is worth noting that, traditional innovation grants frequently prohibit capital expenditure while rates offered by commercial lenders are often so high that it erodes manufacturing margins.

Water is life and beyond. Access to water is a vital development priority that can be converted from an informal coping expense into a bankable investment. The WaterCredit micro-finance model is a good case study of how creative financial thinking has been used to unlock access to water. The model demonstrates how $1 of philanthropic technical assistance capital can unlock $21 in commercial micro-lending for household water installations. By 2030, the global water footprint required to cool data centres supporting artificial intelligence is projected to equal the daily basic water needs of 1.3 billion people thus equitable access to water for development and humanity is vital.

Debt-for-nature swaps have enabled nations to re-finance high cost commercial debt into lower cost credit-enhanced debt and as a result, directed debt service savings into conservation endowments. A good example is the 15 year commercial loan backed by the Inter-American Development Bank and AXA XL private credit insurance that unlocked $124 million in dedicated conservation funding in the Bahamas. It is worth mentioning that green washing was mentioned often during the conference and I believe it is imperative that financial instruments deployed to address nature related challenges intrinsically demonstrate genuine structural additionality by proving that funded ecological outcomes would not have occurred under existing conditions.

Participating in various discussions at BB26 has reshaped my perspective on the evolution of sustainable finance. Bridging the global natural capital gap is not simply a matter of designing complex financial instruments, it requires ensuring that financial engineering is grounded in local community sovereignty, rigorous science-based verification and real world additionality. As I delve deeper into the courses climate finance and innovative finance for global health during the semester, I intend to explore how public-private blended finance frameworks can be better designed and deployed to foster global development.

Author: Atabong Darryl Efuet, Master in International and Development Studies (MINT)

Guest Contribution: This article is brought to you in collaboration with the Geneva Graduate Institute, an Ecosystem Partner of Building Bridges 2026.

Photo Credit: Antoine Tardy

Note: The views, information, data and figures presented in Guest Contributions are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent views or position of Building Bridges. Information, data and figures provided by guest contributors have not been independently verified by Building Bridges.