As discussed in the last year’s Building Bridges, forestry offers a tangible, scalable path for impact investing in emerging markets. This session brings together Latin American fund managers and Nordic investors to explore real-life forestry investments driving environmental and social returns. From carbon credits to blended finance, we dive into how forests can catalyze sustainable finance and ease entry for global north investors into high-potential markets.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are essential to achieving international climate goals while delivering benefits for ecosystems and communities. However, mobilizing finance for NbS remains a significant challenge due to gaps in early-stage project development, investment-readiness, and financing mechanisms.

This session will take participants on a journey from project origination to innovative financing. It will focus on the practical steps required to develop and fund NbS projects—starting with pre-feasibility assessments and moving toward blended and catalytic finance. Real-world case studies from diverse geographies will illustrate challenges and breakthroughs.

Designed as a fishbowl discussion, the session encourages active participation from the audience, who will have the opportunity to rotate into the panel and share insights, questions, and experiences. The conversation will be moderated by Juraj Jurik, Director of Infrastructure and Nature at Global Infrastructure Basel (GIB) Foundation and will bring together perspectives from project developers, investors, the private sector, and philanthropy.

Objectives:
– Illustrate the full NbS investment journey from early concept to finance.
– Identify enabling conditions and partnerships needed to make NbS investable.
– Showcase innovative finance instruments and blended finance approaches.
– Foster peer learning through interactive discussion.
– Generate actionable insights and next-step collaboration opportunities.

Join us as we explore how investors can support nature, through translating global ambition into portfolio approaches. Connect with Aviva Investors and the Zoological Society of London as they share innovative tools and solutions to identify, manage, and engage on nature-related risks and opportunities. Collaborate with us to exchange ideas, build solutions, and drive action needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery for the benefit of people and planet.

Robust sustainability data is essential to steer capital toward real impact, but data inconsistencies, gaps, and greenwashing risks remain widespread. This workshop explores how AI-powered verification and collaborative tools can help financial actors reduce ESG data risk, comply with evolving regulations, and confidently allocate capital aligned with sustainability goals.

This interactive session explores innovative financial solutions to enhance smallholder farmers’ access to finance and climate resilience for cocoa and coffee, aiming to drive sustainability and secure supply. In a fishbowl format, participants will examine the roles of key stakeholders – including traders, investors, multinationals, cooperatives, local companies, and NGOs – in supporting smallholders. The session will highlight country case studies and the impact of multi-stakeholder platforms.

Despite the growth of impact investing over the past years, its expansion is impeded by its limited liquidity. Long holding periods, the lack of secondary markets and foreign currency risks constrain the flow of impact capital, especially into emerging markets. This event will convene experts and practitioners to explore how partnerships among the right stakeholders can concretely create solutions and address liquidity challenges.

How can Risk Mitigation Mechanisms unlock private capital for nature and climate solutions in developing countries? This interactive Workshop will bring together experts to brainstorm on various de-risking tools, such as guarantees, contingency grants, blended finance, derivatives, and innovative insurance. The event aims to exchange ideas on these mechanisms and how they can be deployed, gathering insights from various professionals on challenges, key considerations and how to address them.

How can catalytic capital drive systemic change in emerging markets? How can we demystify this process for those on the journey? This interactive session explores how impact funders, now more than ever, are deploying the capital continuum and using innovative and blended finance to unlock scalable solutions. We will explore new partnerships and models for sustainable impact, showcasing the power of collaboration in advancing the SDGs. Join us—and let’s put capital to work!

The workshop will explore ways in which financial institutions can promote impact in public markets. Examples include engagement, investment strategies, asset classes, product disclosure and impact measurement. The workshop aims to equip stakeholders with the key concepts and approaches to promote impact in their own specific context. To this end, three keynote presentations will offer insights from a regulatory, an academic and a practitioner perspective. The main part of the event will consist of interactive table discussions on different impact channels and aspects of impact in public markets. These discussions will be led by experts from banks, asset managers, academia, NGOs, consultancies and government. This will give participants a detailed insight into a specific impact channel and allow them to derive actionable measures. Participants will also gain a comprehensive overview of impact investing in public markets.

Globally, financial regulators are increasingly expecting financial institutions to identify risks from climate change and nature loss. Materiality analyses are the base for effective risk management, but uncertainties pose challenges, often leading to nature loss being deemed immaterial. This event is designed to help financial institutions understand regulatory expectations regarding nature-related risk management, enhance their risk identification and management capabilities, and will include an interactive knowledge-sharing section.