Cohorts Connect at Building Bridges 2025 introduces a two-part model for structured connection and reflection to conversation and networking. It is designed to support peer exchange, deepen shared understanding, and strengthen cross-sector collaboration in a way that feels purposeful, open, and human. While the approach does not intend to achieve specific goals, through mutual, multi-contextual learning it can create conditions that prime a system for change.

This Reflection Session brings the cohort journey full circle. It begins with a keynote speech about our shared responsibility to transform how finance interacts with nature, people, and the future.

From there, participants move into reflection tables using prompts and live polling (e.g. Mentimeter), the session surfaces what has shifted for participants over the course of the week.

Each table will be invited to share a key insight or commitment with the wider room, bringing visibility to what is emerging across the Building Bridges community. The focus is not on consensus, but on coherence: identifying where the energy is, where collaboration is forming, and what the network wants to grow next.

This event is open to all participants of Building Bridges.

Cohorts Connect at Building Bridges 2025 introduces a two-part model for structured connection and reflection to conversation and networking. It is designed to support peer exchange, deepen shared understanding, and strengthen cross-sector collaboration in a way that feels purposeful, open, and human. While the approach does not intend to achieve specific goals, through mutual, multi-contextual learning it can create conditions that prime a system for change.

This opening session will be hosted as a Warm Data Lab, facilitated by Nora Bateson and the Warm Data Lab team. Developed to explore the relational fabric of complex systems in an immersive manner, this method invites participants to suspend professional personas and engage as people—with stories, patterns, questions, and perspectives.

Rather than speaking about sustainable finance or climate targets, the interactive format has participants engaging in multiple, parallel group conversation, shifting between contexts, thus enabling a reflection on how societal challenges are interwoven. A short story will open the space, followed by the main session where participants join small groups each centered around a “context card” and are invited to freely move from group to group.

Instead of addressing the problems we face analytically, the Warm Data Lab format invites participants to appreciate their systemic nature in an immersive way. With no prior knowledge required, it conveys systems thinking to participants intuitively and can set the stage for change further down the line. All that is needed is curiosity and an explorative mindset.

“This isn’t about solving a problem. It’s about seeing the system more clearly—by seeing each other differently.” – Nora Bateson

The session ends with space for informal exchange and mutual learning. The atmosphere is intentionally light, open-ended, and grounded in trust-building.

Please submit your application by EOD 27 August, 2025. All applicants will receive the outcome of their application by 10 September. 

Private markets are increasingly becoming the decisive force in financing the global energy transition. As the world moves toward a net-zero future, institutional investors, private equity, and infrastructure funds are uniquely positioned to deploy patient, strategic capital into hard-to-abate sectors and emerging climate solutions. This webinar brought insights from leading voices from finance, industry, and policy to examine the investment vehicles, risk frameworks, and collaborative models driving scalable decarbonization. From clean infrastructure to breakthrough technologies, participants heard how private capital is not only accelerating the pace of transition but also reshaping the future of sustainable investing.

Highlights of the Discussion

• Private markets are emerging as a decisive force in the energy transition
• Equity finance plays a catalytic role in mobilising climate capital
• Innovative instruments like transition credits are driving coal phase-outs
• Circular economy solutions offer overlooked emissions-reduction potential

The speakers underscored several key themes:

Unlocking catalytic equity for scale: Private capital, especially equity, is essential to finance the early, high-risk stages of energy transition projects, particularly in emerging markets. There was a resounding call from all speakers for more catalytic equity—capital that is willing to move first, take risk, and enable others to follow. Growth-stage equity was highlighted as an enabler of additional debt financing, helping to crowd in institutional investors and unlock scalable climate solutions. Yet, the equity gap remains acute, especially in developing economies where risks are perceived as higher.

Deploying innovative tools to retire coal: Transition credits, a new form of carbon credit, are being piloted to accelerate the early retirement of coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia. These credits help compensate asset owners for foregone revenues while enabling reinvestment into renewables and supporting just transition outcomes for affected workers and communities. Kimberly Tan (GenZero) introduced a groundbreaking pilot in the Philippines that will shut down a 250MW coal plant a decade early, avoiding 20 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions. Revenues from high-integrity carbon credits will fund both clean energy alternatives and worker transition support.

Investing beyond renewables – into infrastructure and efficiency: Climate finance must go beyond wind and solar. Grid upgrades, decentralised generation, battery storage, localised biomass, and efficiency improvements across industrial and consumer sectors offer strong risk-adjusted returns. Several examples highlighted how flexible private equity structures can bridge financing gaps and bring first-of-a-kind technologies to market. François-Xavier Vucekovic (Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity) shared an investment in a Norwegian company producing “black pellets” from biomass as a low-carbon from waste product as a substitute for coal.

Circularity as a carbon strategy: From recycled plastics to biodegradable consumer goods and refurbished electronics, circular economy solutions offer measurable emissions reductions. Yet they remain underfunded. Alex Ouiment-Storrs (Lombard Odier Investment Managers) described backing a French circular economy startup that produces high-performing, plastic-free personal care products. The company’s refillable formats reduce packaging waste and emissions, while achieving cost and performance parity with conventional goods, critical to mass-market adoption.

The need for patient, purpose-aligned capital: Many of the solutions presented—from carbon monetisation to circularity—require long time horizons and execution capacity. Private equity was seen as particularly well-suited to this challenge, given its hands-on approach from investors and longer investment cycles compared to public markets. Kayode Akinola (Blue Earth Capital) reminded the audience that innovation does not always mean creating something new. Often, it’s about applying known technologies or models from other industries or regions—or revisiting concepts that didn’t scale previously due to timing, capital, or regulatory gaps. The moderator, Barbara Buchner (Climate Policy Initiative) echoed this view, noting the value of looking for fit-for-purpose concepts ready to scale in new contexts.

From pilot to platform: A recurring theme was the need to move beyond isolated pilots and create ecosystems that allow promising solutions to scale. This includes more reliable demand signals (e.g. offtake agreements), better regulatory frameworks, and coordinated policy support for infrastructure, data, and skills development.

Nature and biodiversity loss is no longer a distant threat, it is a direct financial and operational risk. Companies and investors without a strategy for managing nature-related risks are increasingly viewed as unprepared and exposed. This webinar will explore practical approaches to identifying nature-related portfolio impacts and leveraging data and technology to assess and manage these risks. Effective risk mitigation not only safeguards value but also unlocks significant investment opportunities in nature-positive solutions. Participants will gain actionable insights into why integrating nature risk into investment decision-making is essential for building resilient portfolios and capturing long-term value in a climate-smart, nature-aligned economy.

Highlights of the discussion

• Financial institutions are increasingly recognising nature risks
• New technologies help track ecosystem impacts
• Investing in nature means more than conservation – it’s about efficient, regenerative business models
• Approximately 44 trillion of global GDP depends on nature

The speakers stressed the importance of:

• Building trust in nature data. This demands rigorous, transparent methodologies that capture the interplay between ecology and economics and can include integrating advanced technologies like satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and scientific modeling to provide more accurate and reliable information about ecosystem impacts and dependencies.
• Integrating nature into financial decision-making: Financial institutions need to fundamentally transform their risk assessment approaches by recognising that nature is not an external factor but a critical component of economic systems. This includes using sophisticated tools like the TNFD’s LEAP (Locate–Evaluate–Assess–Prepare) approach, that can help organisations identify their precise nature dependencies, assess location-specific risks, and understand the intricate relationships between business operations and ecosystem services.
• Creating new financial instruments: The financial sector can innovate by designing novel investment products that directly channel capital into nature-positive outcomes, such as developing biodiversity credits, and nature-linked bonds. These products can provide economic incentives for ecosystem restoration, conservation, and sustainable resource management while offering attractive returns for investors.
• Shifting accounting practices to value natural assets: Transforming traditional accounting methodologies requires reimagining how businesses perceive and record natural resources. This means moving away from viewing ecosystems as zero-value or potential liabilities to recognising them as critical assets with measurable economic value. Emerging accounting standards embed natural-capital metrics, encouraging leaders to prioritise ecosystem preservation. The result is a more holistic view of a company’s economic potential, with nature risks explicitly recognised.

This session will explore how finance can harness nature as a “shock absorber” to manage systemic risks and strengthen economic resilience in a world of escalating climate and ecological volatility. As nature and climate shocks increasingly translate into fiscal and credit stress—especially in emerging markets—embedding nature into financial and policy strategies is essential. Featuring real-world solutions like Vlinder’s scalable mangrove bond and restoration model, alongside tools like FIMA and the Bioeconomy Finance Hub, the session offers a practical roadmap for aligning nature-based solutions with credit-enhancing, investable pathways.

For innovators at the frontier of building more inclusive carbon markets, access to capital remains a critical constraint. This session will explore how development organizations, financial institutions, and investors are collaborating to de- risk investments and mobilize funding for inclusive carbon projects. Panelists will discuss challenges and opportunities in emerging markets, offering solutions and best practices for unlocking financing with the right balance of risk, patience, and return.

Using carbon credits helps companies reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to greener practices, and achieve climate commitments. The global carbon market is expected to significantly grow, fuelled by evolving regulations and increasing demand from corporates. This workshop dives into the evolving carbon credit landscape. What are today’s investment opportunities in carbon markets? What makes a high-quality and credible carbon credit? What to watch as investor to avoid reputational risk?

This collaborative session, curated by Building Bridges and the Hoffmann Centre for Global Sustainability at the Geneva Graduate Institute, will explore one of the most transformative shifts in our economic system: recognizing nature as a critical but unvalued asset.

Nature underpins the global economy, yet the value it delivers to businesses, economies, and societies remains largely absent from financial accounts. As biodiversity loss accelerates and climate-related disruptions intensify, nature-related risks, both physical and transition, are already impacting corporate bottom lines and supply chains.

Experts will discuss how “natural capital” alongside financial capital needs to be financially attributed to the balance sheet as a critical asset. Experts will highlight emerging global frameworks and standards, highlighting pioneering case studies, that are helping embed nature into financial portfolios and corporate balance sheets. 

As AI becomes an indispensable tool in tackling climate, biodiversity, and sustainability challenges, its own environmental footprint is coming under scrutiny. The rapid deployment of AI systems demands massive computing power, water, and energy and is raising urgent questions about how to align AI innovation with planetary boundaries. This session explores how finance can reconcile these twin imperatives by channelling capital toward greener AI infrastructure, supporting responsible innovation, and embedding environmental and ethical standards into AI-related investments.

Moving from a fossil fuel-based economy to a decarbonised one has become more complex in recent years in the face of protective political agendas. However, as power demand continues to rise as a result of increasing electrification and data centre needs, we are witnessing a wave of investments irrespective of geopolitical developments and national agendas accelerating the energy transition. 

However, the electrification of energy systems requires vast amounts of materials, from the infrastructure needed through to the use cases like EVs. To be assured of materials supply to enable the energy transition, we need to consider the role of ethical sourcing and how ensuring local relations with communities and best environmental practices can be conducive to securing essential materials in a world increasingly focussed on resource nationalism.