Presenting the Natural Capital Young Leaders Prize | NatCap 2026

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day two. I can tell by the conversations that you've all already made lots of friends and colleagues and it's wonderful to hear all of the the conversations happening this morning. Um we want to go ahead and get started with this morning's session. Um and I just want to thank everyone first of all for just a fantastic day yesterday. All of the speakers, um all of you in the audience here, the questions, the engagement during all the breaks. Um it was really stimulating and interesting and so we're looking forward to another great two days together. So, I'm really pleased to be welcoming you to this uh morning session. And first I just want to explain uh briefly that we are going to the first part of this morning session is going to be the natural capital young leaders prize. And then we're going to move directly into the plenary session for the second half of this morning session before the coffee break. So, to start um I am very excited about this young leaders prize award session. It's the third year, the third cohort of the young leaders prize and I think one of the most rewarding parts of our of our work at the natural capital alliance is supporting the next generation of leaders who are advancing natural capital approaches around the world and it really tries to recognize people who are not only doing you know, great research, um but also who are really translating that into policies, investments and actions that are really improving the lives of people and communities around the world. Um and this year we're really excited to recognize not only individuals, but also an entire organization um for their innovative leadership in advancing natural capital accounting. So, you'll hear more about that momentarily. Um so, thank you so much for joining us as we celebrate these people. And I'm first to going to invite Gretchen Daily to share some words about the inspiration and the vision for the prize and to introduce our first prize winner. So, thank you, Gretchen. >> [applause] >> Morning everybody. I hope you had a fabulous evening and a restful night. And um just building on what Kim's saying, there's just nothing more joyful um or fulfilling [clears throat] than to see the young leaders coming along in our big community. And that seeing them doing things we'd never have dreamed of when we were young. And it's um just brilliant to um have this moment to reflect on where we've come from, where our movement is heading, and really shine a light on some of the many beautiful young leaders coming along. And um I also want to say a little bit more than um building on what Kim announced with respect to the purpose. The idea here in all our work is to help elevate one another, elevate the tremendous advances that are being driven, the innovations. And in this case, there's just amazing um progress being made by a set of people that you'll get to know in a moment. Um and our purpose is to help bring credibility, bring visibility, bring impact to what they're doing. Let others learn from it and um adapt and adopt their approaches. We're also trying to help, you know, build their experience and capacity and um network. So, as the time goes on, if you identify young leaders, um we'll be interested to hear um who you might recommend and bring them into our process for for selecting, which is the most difficult part of all this. And then mainly they they help strengthen what we're all doing. So, I want [clears throat] finally, before introducing the first set, to thank Chuck and Roberta Katz especially for the vision behind this and uh for launching the prize. So, thanks so much to um the two of you. And now um thinking about the actual leaders we're going to present, uh the first set is actually a team from Bhutan working in the National Statistics Bureau and taking on a really um exciting challenge and impactful challenge um to deploy GEP in Bhutan to be the first country to do so at the national scale. And starting really from scratch, we've been working closely together um to help build capacity and develop um the gross ecosystem product accounts. And with the inspiration really from the Prime Minister and from His Majesty the fifth king, um there's tremendous scope to illuminate the power of this new um metric and whole set of approaches that go with it um around the world and um in working with with the National Statistics Bureau whom you'll meet in a moment um it's been fabulous just to appreciate the culture of Bhutan the collective culture the um the sharing of of credit and everything and the collective spirit in which we're giving the prize honoring the entire um National Statistics Bureau. We had hoped that several members could be here today but unfortunately they didn't manage to get a visa >> [clears throat] >> and um so we're going to celebrate them um more or less online and I'll turn over to that now. Thank you Kim. >> [music] >> Distinguished delegates, fellow leaders and members of the Net-Cap team, ladies and gentlemen, Kuzuzangpo and warm greetings from Bhutan. It's indeed a great honor and privilege for the National Statistics Bureau of Royal Government of Bhutan to be invited to this very important symposium and to be recognized for the Natural Capital Young Leaders Award 2026. We are deeply grateful to the organizers and the Net-Cap team for this recognition. More importantly we value the opportunity to join a global community committed to advancing our understanding of natural capital and its role in sustainable development. For Bhutan the idea that nature matters is not new. It is deeply embedded in our development philosophy of Gross National Happiness, first articulated by His Majesty the fourth Druk Gyalpo, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. For decades, this philosophy has guided Bhutan's efforts to pursue development that balances economic progress with environmental conservation, cultural preservation, and good governance. This commitment is reflected in our Constitution, which requires that at least 60% of Bhutan's land remain under forest cover for all time. Today, Bhutan remains carbon negative, demonstrating that environmental stewardship and socio-economic development can reinforce one another. As countries around the world seek more sustainable pathways for growth, there is increasing recognition that nature is not simply a backdrop to development. Nature underpins our economies, supports livelihoods, strengthens resilience, and contributes directly to human well-being. As Bhutan looks ahead, we are also exploring new approaches to sustainable development. One such initiative is the Gelephu Mindfulness City, GMC, envisioned under the visionary leadership of His Majesty the King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. This initiative seeks to integrate economic opportunity, innovation, environmental sustainability, human well-being, while remaining fully aligned with Bhutan's long-standing development values. It represents our earnest effort to explore how future urban development can balance economic aspirations with environmental responsibility, spiritual, and social well-being. In Bhutan, natural capital accounting has gained important national priority. During the fifth session of the fourth parliament in June 2026, Honorable Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay, in his state of the nation's report, underscored the importance of developing the system of natural capital and gross ecosystem product as tools to recognize the value of natural assets and to support opportunities for climate finance, sustainable investment, and green growth. In this regard, the National Statistics Bureau is privileged to be working with the NatCap team and other partners in developing Bhutan's first gross ecosystem product and natural capital accounts. This work will help make visible the contributions of forests, rivers, biodiversity, ecosystems to the economy and society, strengthening the evidence needed to support sustainable and informed decision-making. This award is therefore highly meaningful and significant to us. We accept it not only as an honor, but also as an encouragement to continue learning, collaborating, and contributing to the advancement of the natural capital accounting and sustainable development. I would also like to express our sincere appreciation to the NatCap team, particularly Gretchen, Tong, Annie, Stacy, Eric, and all those who have supported Bhutan since the beginning of this initiative. Your expertise, partnership, friendship have been invaluable and we look forward to your continued support. Allow me to conclude with a simple thought. Nature sustains all economies, all societies, and ultimately all people. Yet, too often its contributions remain invisible in the decisions we make. The growing global movement towards natural capital accounting is in many ways an effort to make the invisible visible. By doing so, we can make better decisions on behalf of the Royal Government of Bhutan and the National Statistics Bureau, I once again express my sincere gratitude for this honor and congratulate all fellow recipients of the Natural Capital Young Leaders Award. We accept this award with a deep sense of humility, appreciation, and renewed commitment to advance this very important work. Thank you and Tashi Delek. >> [music] >> That was beautiful video. We will um be sure to convey to the the entire team um our congratulations. Um so, thank you for your attention. That was really really beautiful. And if any of you do ever have a chance to go to Bhutan and meet the amazing beautiful people there, Highly recommended. Um so, now we are going to move from Bhutan to another part of the world, to Latin America, where we're going to recognize um our next winners, who we had the fortune to meet through the last couple years, really, through working on the People, Planet, Prosperity project that you've heard about. Um and so, we're um really pleased to be able to recognize and celebrate these remarkable individuals. And it's my pleasure to be able to welcome Juan Pablo Bonilla, manager of the climate change and sustainable development sector at the Inter-American Development Bank. And some of you had a chance to meet him yesterday, and he is going to provide the introductions for our next two prize winners. So, thank you, Juan Pablo. >> [applause] >> I thought I I was going to get one of the prizes. Not too young anymore. >> It was a bait and switch. >> No, it is really um a pleasure um having the honor of recognizing uh two who young leaders. And uh as you mentioned at the beginning, I think it's a recognition not only for them, but for the institutions that they represent. Uh yesterday, in the opening, I mentioned to you how we have been working together with the NatCap to support, I would say, the mainstreaming on how ministries of economy, planning, are working together with ministries of environment to really being able to incorporate the natural capital agenda into finance, into planning, and being able to do that as a system in the countries. Uh so, today, I have the pleasure of uh recognizing together two young leaders that have been key in doing that in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Let me start with Uruguay. Luisa Olivera from the Ministry of Economy and Finance has been our counterpart in advancing this agenda of mainstreaming natural capital in a central economic institution. Through the Uruguay pilot, Luisa helped integrate the perspective of the ministry into the project ensuring that the science and economic valuation of wetlands in Uruguay could directly support the development of economic instruments to sustain their protection. Beyond that, I mentioned yesterday that we have supported the region in creating a platform for ministries of finance about sustainability, climate, biodiversity, natural disasters. And Luisa has been keen as co-chair of the nature work stream at the platform to advance and integrate nature into fiscal policy at the regional level. Her leadership reflects how this agenda can be effectively advanced with finance institutions strengthening the way macroeconomic and fiscal decisions are informed. Luisa, it is a pleasure to invite you to the stage and recognize your contribution. >> [applause] >> Hi. Good morning to everyone. Um let me see. Okay. I like to start by telling you a little about where I came from. Uruguay is a small country in South America about the size of Washington State between Brazil and Argentina. We are a country with 3.5 million people and where 98% of our electricity comes from renewable sources. Also, we have nearly 98 95% of our land in natural ecosystems or agricultural land. So, nature is not a backdrop to the economy. It is the economy. Our rivers, wetlands, grasslands, and coastlines are the foundation of where we produce, what we export, and how we live. So, for Uruguay, um integrating nature into economic decision-making is not an abstract aspiration. It's something It's an urgent need. So, okay, but what What about me? I'm an economist at the Uruguay Ministry of Economy and Finance. I have always been drawn to to natural world outside of work since very little. I'm a certified gardener and a bird watcher. But, when I started study studying economics in Uruguay, nature was nowhere to be found in the curriculum. Not even remotely. The idea that ecosystem um had economic value or that biodiversity loss had a fiscal consequences, that simply wasn't part of the conversation. Fortunately, this has changed internationally and uh slowly is changing at home, too. But, that gap between between what economic was and what it needed to become has shaped my career. I spent uh over a decade working on infrastructure, evaluating public-private partnership, assessing financial risk, designing regulatory framework. I It was an important work. I like it, but I kept feeling that something was missing there. We were building roads, railroads, social infrastructure, but where they were blind to something fundamental, the natural capital that those projects depends on. And the ecosystem they affect. As an economist, I realized we were missing half the picture. So, in 2023, I moved to the environmental area at the ministry that was recently created. And that missing piece finally had a place in my work. And okay, what does the work actually look like now? As it's core, it's about building a bridge, or more specifically, a common language between two words that don't really speak to each other. Economists and environmental scientists. The pilot project with the NatCap team is the perfect example of that. Together with colleagues from the Ministry of Environment, we run a natural capital assessment of Uruguay wetlands using biophysical models to quantify four ecosystem services: water regulation, coastal coastal protection, flood mitigation, and carbon sequestration. The question we we wanted to answer was, "What is the value of wetlands?" And how we this information can be used to policy instruments. To answer that questions, geographers, biologists, and economists have to sit at the same table with the same data, and agree on what value means. That is what what building a common language looks like, I think. Another important motivation motivation for me is that climate change dominates the global conversation on sustainability and it's okay, it's right, but for countries like Uruguay and for Latin America, the agenda must go further. Biodiversity loss, water quality, soil degradation, ecosystem services, those are not secondary issues. So, I think nature transition is the defining challenge for our generation and it's required the same urgency, the same financial innovation, and the same institutional commitment as climate change. Our wetland assessment is an effort in this way. Finally, um I want to take a moment to say that the work I described is only possible because a remarkable team of colleagues at the Ministry of the Environment, at the NACAP team, and also the support of IDB. So, science, policy, and finance only connect when people trust each other enough to learn from each other. So, I'm deeply grateful to everyone because I think we achieved that. So, I'm honored, generally really honored for this prize, and also because this prize recognizes also the work that Uruguay is doing to put nature into conversation of economic decision-making. So, thank you very much. >> [applause] [applause] >> Yesterday we talked about key things for mainstreaming nature. I think Luis explained it way better than all of us. But I would just highlight Luis what you mentioned at the end is the ability with a lot of humility to listen to the others, learn about each other and create that trust. I think that's going to be for me one of the key messages here. Congratulations again and now let us turn to Colombia. Fabian Villalba from the National Department of Planning has played a leading role in advancing the use of natural capital accounting to inform sustainable development in Colombia. His work has helped translate ecosystems accounting into practical inputs for policy, finance and national planning processes. This includes pioneer efforts to demonstrate how ecosystems underpin water and energy security in the country as well as advancing approaches to protect protected areas, protected area finance and broader application of ecosystem accounting. Through through this leadership Fabian has helped position Colombia at the forefront of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean developing and applying national natural capital accounting. Fabian's leadership showed how technical innovation can be embedded into decision-making systems strengthening the way development priorities are across the sectors. Although Fabian is not able to join us today in person, the Natural Capital Alliance has a video from him to share with all of us. >> Hi, good morning from Bogota. First I would like to thank give thanks to God for this opportunity and for to the people, communities and institutions that have shaped my journey, especially the National Planning Department of Colombia. I also want to thank the NatCap team, the Natural Capital Alliance, and the selection committee for this generous recognition. I am deeply honored to receive the Natural Capital Young Leaders Prize. I regret that I cannot be with you in person today, but I'm very grateful for the opportunity to join you through this video. I also want to congratulate my fellow prize recipients. It's a privilege to share this recognition with leaders that who are working to make nature more visible in the decisions that shape our societies. So, let me share some small presentation. So, what can I say? My journey began began with curiosity. Since I was very young, I have been driven by a desire to learn, explore, and understand things I did not know before. That curiosity first led me into science, and eventually into theoretical physics. I completed a PhD working on general relativity, gravitation, black holes, and complex systems. Physics shaped the way I think, looking for structures, relationships, state variables, and the deeper logic behind apparently different phenomena. But my curiosity was never limited to one discipline. I also had a very personal connection with nature. Some of my my earliest memories are walking through the countryside where my grandparents lived here in Colombia, exploring the forests, the dry tropical ecosystems, and the biodiversity around me. In a way, those two worlds, the abstract language of physics and the living complexity of ecosystems, shaped the way now I now approach public policy. Around 50 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to move forward from academic science into public policy. My entry point was technical, computational modeling, numerical analysis, and the study of macroeconomic flows. One of the most important experiences in my career was contributing from 2011 to 2013 to pioneering work on the economic impacts of climate change in Colombia. At that time, climate economics was becoming a new and influential field globally, especially after the Stern Review. That experience was decisive for me. It showed me that models are not only academic tools. When used well, they can help governments see risks, compare alternatives, and open new policy conversations. More recently, my work has moved towards natural capital and ecosystem accounting. What I find powerful about ecosystem accounts is that they allow us to see nature territorially, not as an abstract resource, but as a set of spatial relationships between ecosystems, people, communities, and economic activities. In the Sinú Basin, for example, this work helped illustrate how ecosystems support water and energy security, and how ecosystem information can inform investment and planning decisions. Through the People, Planet, and Prosperity Initiative, I also had the opportunity to contribute to the prioritization of ecosystem services, especially water-related services, and to reflect on how this information can be connected with financial instruments and policy decisions at the local level. For me, natural capital accounting is not only about measurement. It is about helping institutions understand the systems they are trying to transform. What inspires me most is the possibility of connecting worlds that often seem separate, science of and policy, public finance and environmental action, economic modeling and territorial realities, nature and development. In my own journey, moving from academia into public policy taught me that connecting these worlds requires more than technical knowledge. It requires understanding how institutions work, their mandates, constraints, procedures, responsibilities, and cultures. This has helped me see see that good ideas need more than evidence. They also need institutional pathways. They need to be translated into decisions, instruments, budgets, and processes that can actually work in real contexts. The transformation we need is environmental, but it is also economic, financial, productive, and institutional. For Latin America, I believe natural capital leadership must be able to speak with many different actors and help build consensus. We need leaders who can connect evidence with decisions, finance with nature, and technical tools with the realities of people and communities. I receive this award with gratitude and also with a sense of responsibility toward the younger leaders who will carry this work forward. I hope that whatever I have been able to contribute with can become one small stone in the foundation of what future generations will build. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> All right. >> [clears throat] >> Wonderful Uh words from Fabian from Colombia. Um and I find fascinating that's perhaps not a typical path um into natural capital accounting sort of via theoretical physics and studying black holes. So, I imagine conversations with Fabian are are fascinating and varied. So, we will be sure to convey our congratulations to him. Um so, I have the pleasure of introducing our next and final prize winner, uh Boris Ochoa-Tocachi. And um Boris is from Ecuador and he worked closely with Hector Angarita from the NatCap team on uh some of the people planet prosperity work in Ecuador as well as some of um the projects in Uruguay and he supported a few other things uh that we were doing and uh Hector had to say about Boris, "Boris is the most interesting hydrologist of the 21st century in the northern Andes. The work he is doing on mountain hydrology is incredible." Let me tell you a little bit more about Boris before you get to hear from him. So, he's a hydrologist. He's a civil engineer and an entrepreneur whose work really exemplifies the the power of natural capital approaches combining rigorous science with practical policy solutions um to try and solve various environmental challenges particularly with respect to water and hydrology. So, he's the CEO of Atuk Strategic Consulting, which is a certified B Corporation in Ecuador and he's has applied natural capital approaches to improve water security, climate resilience, and sustainable development. His work has been widely recognized in scientific publications, international collaborations, and leadership roles. And he has really explored this this nexus of how indigenous knowledge and nature-based solutions can be combined with modern hydrological science to strengthen water security in the Andes and beyond. He has an inspiring commitment to ensuring that scientific evidence really informs real-world decisions. And his leadership is really helping demonstrate how natural capital approaches can support resilient communities, healthier ecosystems, and more sustainable economies. So, please join me in welcoming and congratulating Dr. Boris Ochoa T. >> [applause] >> Thank you very much. It is a real honor to be here. I want to thank the University of Stanford, the Natural Capital Alliance, the Inter-American Development Bank for being instrumental to the systemic change. I want to tell you a little about the work that we do. This is a journey through a stream. This is to mainstream natural capital approaches in Latin America, in the Andes, and beyond. I did study civil engineering. My inspiration was my father, actually. He was a lawyer, and he was working with indigenous and rural communities. and my mother was a travel agent and a nature lover that seeded us love, the same love for nature and for traveling, which is something that I really enjoy. And when I was studying in civil civil engineering, I wanted to connect that with that love for nature. And the way to connect civil engineering to that was hydrology. What you see here, this movement, like this respiration that the Andes feel, this interaction between the Caribbean, the Amazon and the Pacific are these flying rivers that we've been talking about during these days. How water moves throughout the Andes and how landscapes are created because of this variability, from deserts to rainforests and people that have lived here for centuries adapting to these very extreme conditions. And these are two sides of the same coin. Flooding when we have excess water and droughts when we have when a lack of water. I was very grateful to work with the IMEA. This is the regional initiative for hydrological monitoring of Andean ecosystems that we're looking at replicating an experiment throughout the Andes to understand how land use management changes the hydrological response of Andean catchments. This is a group with more than 30 stakeholders, more than 50 sites of monitoring in the Andes and more than 200 equipment located in the Andes to understand how rainfall transforms into river flow and how that sustains the livelihoods of people in in the Andes. More specifically in Peru, I had the the pleasure and the honor to work with the natural infrastructure for water security project uh which was funded by the now extinct USAID and the government of Canada and implemented by a consortium of institutions led by Forest Trends that mobilized a portfolio of 300 more than 370 million dollars into nature-based solutions for water security and it strengthened the capacity of more than 5,000 people of which 2,400 were women uh and uh tried to really create policies that could be in place in Peru in order to invest in water security for disaster uh management and for uh water uh availability in general. And more recently in Ecuador uh the natural capital uh project alliance now uh implemented this uh assessment of natural capital and ecosystem services in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve in the northern Amazonian uh region of Ecuador in which uh more than uh 150 local stakeholders participated in this effort to quantify the value of ecosystem services to understand how this can sustain also the livelihoods not only of the people that are living in the Amazon but also uh for the entire country and the benefits that we produce for the rest of the of the world. I want to really uh thank here NatCap Insights our partner that together with that took develop this project the natural capital alliance uh and the Inter-American Development Bank and the GEF uh for supporting this uh study that has been instrumental now to create policy within the Ministry of Environment and Energy the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the National Institute for Biodiversity that are able now to use this as a reference for future projects in the country. I also want to recognize that this is not only an individual effort. I am the visible face here, but this is a team effort. And I want to recognize the the faces and the work that the Atuk team has put into this this work. When I went back to Ecuador and created uh Atuk with my brothers, one is a is an economist, Eric, and Diego, my other brother is a mathematician. Uh we wanted to connect economy, science, and nature, particularly water, to solve uh problems. Uh this is our role. How we can translate science into policy and and financial decisions. How we can go through this multi-level decision-making from local communities to governments and ministries. How we can incorporate science in these decisions. I don't want to repeat uh the same sentence that we've been repeating, but this is very important. Nature is the economy. It's not only a support for the economy. And I think that we all have a role in translating this knowledge, this science, and creating this dialogue between indigenous and ancient knowledge and western scientific knowledge to uh provide information for better decisions. Our purpose for the future is to redefine the rela- relationship between humanity and nature. And I'm sure that we all in this room have the same vision. We want to create a different future, a better future, in which humans and nature understand each other, and we understand that we are part of that same nature. Thank you very much. I want to thank again the University of Stanford and the Natural Capital Alliance for uh this award. And I also want to congratulate my fellow award recipients for this great honor. Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Well, that was really fun. I always get a tear in my eye listening to people um speak so eloquently and passionately and with such depth of experience and feeling and um all domains of being um and integrating so many dimensions of uh the world that we're hoping to knit together better for a much better future. And thank you very much for participating in this. Let's have a final round of applause and we'll move on to the next session. >> [applause]