Policy Recommendations on Making Natural Capital Count: An Investment Agenda

Background of the Policy Recommendation

In September 2025, the Center for Global Commons and Systemiq co-authored a report, Making Natural Capital Count: An Investment Agenda1, as a companion report to the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG)2 announced at the COP30 in Brazil. This report complements the IHLEG’s core report by providing a roadmap for embedding natural capital into economic and financial decision-making and scaling up much needed investment into nature.

Natural capital is a foundation of resilient and prosperous economy and is a critical infrastructure along with produced and human capital, comprising inclusive wealth. Tools to value and account for nature (such as shadow pricing and quantitative biophysical accounting) exist but they are barely used in decision-making. As a result, the current economic and financial system does not fully recognize the value of natural capital and regards its protection as a cost rather than an essential investment for longterm growth and stability. This failure creates a vicious cycle of chronically
underinvested natural capital to decline towards tipping points, increasing nature and climate risks, which further undermines productivity and resilience. To reverse this detrimental practice, the report calls for redesigning the global economic and financial system to make natural capital count, which leads to “putting nature on the balance sheet”. It identifies enablers (including policies, accounting systems, financial instruments) that can work in synergy to accelerate the structural institutional reforms and create cascading change. Policy recommendations for decision makers from this report are:

  1. Build shared data and metrics infrastructure based on existing global natural capital databases, shadow pricing, and valuation methodologies for key ecosystem services. They must be accessible and comparable across countries, ministries,
    markets, and sectors.
  2. Turn natural capital valuation into insights that can inform economic and financial
    decision-making.
  3. Broadcast and amplify proof points where valuing nature pays off. Refine and develop effective and scalable mechanisms based on successes and mixed outcomes.
  4. Align globally by integrating natural capital consistently across national policy, international rules, and corporate and financial markets. Nature does not recognize national boundaries and requires concerted actions.


1 Ishii N, Schmidt-Traub G, Haagh V, Bergote B, Ibsen O, Nohl R (2025). Making Natural Capital Count: An Investment Agenda
https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_IHLEG_Making-Natural-Capital-Count_FULL-REPORT.pdf

2 Bhattacharya A, Songwe V, Soubeyran E and Stern N (2025). Delivering an integrated climate finance agenda in support of the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T. London: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/IHLEG-on-Climate-Finance-4th-Report-Delivering-an-integrated-climate-finance-agenda.pdf

The full report can be downloaded below.

Policy Recommendation(PDF)