The People, Planet, Prosperity Project: Mainstreaming Nature in Policy and Investment | NatCap 2026

All right, welcome back for lunch. If you weren't here this morning, I am Lisa Mandal, co-executive director of the Natural Capital Alliance. Welcome to this session on the people, planet, prosperity project or 3P's project, country applications of natural capital in policy and planning. Unlike the morning sessions, we're all in plenary. If this is not the session, I hope this is the session you are want to be in. We welcome everybody. If you were expecting to be in a different session, there are a couple of concurrent sessions which will be down the hall in the in the Fiser Conference Center, but I hope you'll stay. So, we're we're thrilled to be marking the culmination of the 3P project in person in this way. Um, this session is going to provide a practical look at what it means to use natural capital approaches to bring natural capital information into policy and planning. um to it's a chance to share lessons learned and experiences and stories um and answer some of the the questions we were talking about in the morning panel about what does success look like and how do we overcome challenges. So I'll provide a brief introduction and then we have actually two panel sessions. Um so I'll quickly turn things over to the panel to get into the really exciting parts. So, we've mentioned the three-piece project a number of times. Um, and the goal is to mainstream nature in policy and finance decisions. This has been a real collaboration across multiple um multilateral uh development banks and a number of funders to make this project a reality. I know I and many others have have been talking about natural capital approaches a bunch of times. I don't think we've really defined that term yet. For folks who aren't already familiar with it, when we're talking about natural capital approaches, we're talking about modeling and mapping and quantifying benefits that nature provides to people and incorporating those values into policy and investment decisions in order to achieve better outcomes for people and nature together. So this this goal of being benefiting people and benefiting nature and recognizing those links between the two, the three piece project really aimed to co-develop these natural capital approaches with collaborators from country governments and from these multilateral development banks in order to drive new policy and finance decisions and to develop capacity within countries and within institutions for long-term systemic change. And the uh the ambition was not just to um drive that change within the countries where we were working, but really to be able to scale that by sharing lessons learned for governments, for development banks and financial institutions to be able to replicate this approach um in you know countries around the world. Mary showed this slide before um so I won't go into details but just to say that across the 16 countries where we worked there were 16 kind of different flavors of natural capital approaches and I think a main takeaway here is that natural capital approaches can enter into um decision-making processes across a whole spectrum everywhere from initial planning and developing strategies all the way through to implementation to then monitor monitoring and reporting um and verification. So there's not no one wrong way to get started and many many ways um to advance this work. So on the panel on this session today, you'll hear from 10 of the 16 um representatives from 10 of the 16 countries where we have been implementing these approaches covering the um interamerican development bank pilot countries in the LAC Latin America and Caribbean region and the um pilots done in collaboration with the Asian development bank in the Asia-Pacific region. And I think a few key things um will be you'll few key messages I think that we'll we'll hear from this panel are that one natural capital approaches as I said before can support multiple phases of decision-m um and that these approaches are really most impactful when they're designed to answer questions the needs of decision makers the questions decision makers have and that it's the data and the numbers and the maps are really important but on their own they only go so far and the real change and transformation happens when these approaches are embedded in within institutions. So we'll hear from from speakers in two panels. The first panel um which will be moderated by my colleague Duval Jaguno from the Interamerican Development Bank is focused on zoning compensation and planning and then we'll have a second panel moderated by my colleague natural capital alliance senior scientist Ector Angorita on finance and natural capital. So with that I will hand it over to you Dval. Thank you. [applause] Thank you very much Lisa and congratulation for this the napk symposium and this panel will be bilingual in Spanish and English in English and some of the presentation could be in Spanish some could be in English the panel will focus in how apply natural capital assessment in soning compensate compensation and planning decisions. I introduce is a speaker just before they present. The first speaker is from Chile. He is Albero Chi. Albero is an economist from economies and Chile minister of environment and he is a he has a central role in developing the country natural capital accounting framework and he is integrating in system into territorial planning and bodiversity policy and he will talk about the pilot project in Rio Buueno basin and go ahead Albero and expect you and the impact of this pilot project in legislation in Chile too by the bodiversity love implementation. Thank you very much and very welcome Albert. [applause] Thank you very much. is it's a great honor to be here to present to present uh contributions of natural capital approaches to the implementation of public policies in Chile. The case of Rio Wenobasing what is the pilot project about uh in Chile? Uh the pilot focused on supporting the implementation of a new public policy uh biodiversity policy through a practical application of natural capital approaches in the Rio Bueno basin. This uh decision uh was made by the natural capital committee um because this territory uh has a lot of um variety of ecosystem services bene beneficiaries and including um local communities and indigenous people as well. The curve the curve focus uh is um operationalized um the biodiversity offset instrument under Chile's new biodiversity and predicted area service the SPAP to compensate residual environmental impacts. The methodology combined ecosystem services assessment natural capital evaluation and policy analysis. The key products included delivered decision support tools um such as um ecosystem services uh maps, economic maps, regulatory uh criteria maps and altogether uh had to um develop a portfolio of preferred restoration areas. Uh it has a strategic goal design pilot insights to guide broader policy integration across biodiversity, water and development. agendas. The role of natural capital information included spatial modeling and data integration. We'll um develop ecosystem ma mapping to generate spatial data for six key ecosystem services including water, sediment, uh nutrients, carbon, habitat and recreation, economic valuation of those uh ecosystem services and a regulatory alignment uh translated by Chile's biodiversity offset regulation criteria into a a functional spatial layers uh al together um combined um these layers to target priority areas where biodiversity benefits um ecosystem services co benefits economic opportunities and regulatory priorities converge. What it influenced um by bringing all this information together um helped identify prefer restoration uh areas where multiple objectives uh converge. These areas represent locations where biodiversity offset actions have the potential to generate biodiversity gains while also delivering uh ecosystem service benefits and social co- benefits. The pilot therefore provided a transparent and evidencebased uh approach for supporting the implementation of the biodiversity offsets instrument and demonstrated a key element uh that how natural capital approaches can strengthen the coherence traceability and effectiveness of environmental decision making. Uh open questions. Uh one of the key questions uh moving forward is how to translate this pilot uh results in into an operational decision support process uh that can be systematically adopted by public institutions. Um while the pilot demonstrated uh the value of integrating ecological, economic and regulatory information, an important next step is understanding how these approaches um can be embedded into institutional process in a long-term uh work uh and scaled across different territories and policy instruments and that's is precisely uh the next steps for the new project. So thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Thank you very [applause] Thank you very much Alvaro. The next presenter is Jade Deabus. Jade is a senior scientist at CScape Solutions and a senior fellow at natural capital alliance. She has more than 15 years of experience in natural capital approach. Jet work in bise. She's part of the famous case pilot project in Bise as well the cook islands focuses in Marilagon wet sheet and today she is not presenting about the she is presenting about cook island pilot project welcome Jade [applause] >> Hi everyone it's nice to see you all here some familiar faces and new ones um so today talking about the Cook Islands. Uh that was one of the 16 countries we worked in as part of the 3P project. And the Cook Islands was um I guess if I were to put things along a spectrum, we talked about Biz that has over a decade of experience doing those things. Cook Islands was kind of like a first timer on like integrating natural capital approaches in their decisions. That is not to say that in their culture nature is part of their daily lives. So sometime there's language but there's also culture that can show that natural capital they just call it differently is also important. So um when we got together they wanted us to focus on part of their the main island which is called the Muri Lagoon which is also known as the golden stretch. Why? because 75% of their tourism goes through this area to enjoy nature, stay in nice uh coastal hotels and it's also one of the areas where water is safe for local children to go play and recreate. The challenge is that when there's um big development happening around tourism, so did the wersheds get alterred which resulted in more flooding risk coming from the wersheds, more landbased source pollution that ended up turning the lagoon into an algae soup that made it on Trip Advisor and that that got the attention of ADB that got the attention of the local government of like how do we restore this lens integrated management system which is how things were done traditionally. So an integrated team got together. We had the ADB um joining the the team, the Minister of Finance, the Ministry of Environment and local chief leaders from the Mur Lagoon area. We got together to diagnose the problem and the priorities. And what they wanted was um use this natural capital assessment framework. For one, um put everybody on the same page. When you have maps that shows what's going on in a holistic way all the way from the summit of the mountains to the lagoon, it kind of takes away the argument of like what's going wrong and brings everybody together to find a solution over there as well. Um it's a different land tenure system. the government doesn't tell to doesn't get to tell people what to do on their land. The local chief holders are the ones who decide. And so what the government saw in the value of these approaches is that it could help create incentivized land owners to also change their practices. Um the other piece of why they wanted to do this kind of work was also to bring co-inancing and develop finance mechanisms. one to help fund a wastewater treatment plant that ADBA is co-inancing and the other one was also to help um bring resources for local grassroot nos who wanted to restore the river systems and so we got together around tables with pen and colors and maps and we started drawing things to see where do we do things and how um and then we had our team uh take this information put it into GIS into invest test models to look at, okay, if we were to bring back if we were to envision this future, um, how would it change sediment runoff, nutrient runoff, and flood risk? We got some, uh, good results that showed that bringing back the repair and buffers could reduce sediment uh, runoff by over 50%. We we also found that bringing uh building green spaces along the the watershed length could help reduce flooding risk. And um and we also saw that the wastewater treatment plant could reduce nutrient runoff by over 90%. And so this information was taken a bit further because that was telling us what's the potential trade-offs that we're making by changing landscape practices. And the ADB economy team did an economic valuation of like who would be willing to pay and how much to make those things come to life. And we found they in um they did the survey with residents and tourists and they were able to find out that uh both of them were willing to pay one-off donation over $300 to bring back water quality to its highest standards. And so today this information is being used to help bring co-inancing. It's also being uh this approaches are being taken up by the government and replicated in other watersheds under Jeff 7 89. Sorry, I can't keep track of all these Jeff Grant rounds. Um but just to show you that we're starting small of a pilot, we were able to have something that rippled out um across the island and into the regional space as well. Thank you. [applause] >> Thank you very much, J. Uh the next presenter is from Uruguay is Veronica Pinu. Veronica is the national director of biodiversity and ecosystem service at minister of environment. She has an large background in environmental governments and national and municipal levels. She is biologist and she has a master degree in agricultural science from the University of the Republic. Welcome Veronica. >> [applause] >> Hi, good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to share Uruguay experience using natural capital assessment to support wetland conservations in in Uruai. Our pilot project focus on generate scientific evidence to inform implementation of Uruguay's wetland protection policy through a natural capital assessment. Wetland cover around 12% of Uruguay's territory and are distributed uh around the entire country. They provide essential benefits to both nature and people including carbon storage, flow regulation, water supply and coastal protection. Despite their importance, wetlands have historic historically been viewed as a land available for agricultural extension infrastructure and urb development leading to widespread drainage and degradation. Again this h this background our objective was not only to generate new information but also to strengthen technical capacity within government improve coordination across institution and promote innovation in environmental policy. The project was implemented over one year by a multi-disiplinary team composed of government staff and local consultants working closely with senior government officials. the ID IDB and the natural capital project to assess ecosystem service. We used the invest modeling platform develop development by the natural capital project. This allowed us to map and quantify four key ecosystem service carbon storage flood mitigation water supply and coastal protection. The analysis uh were conducted at different spatial scales depending the on the policy questions and the availability of data. Carbon storage was assessed nation nationwide coastal protection along Europe's coastline and flood mitigation and water supply across the country's four main uh river basins. We then com we then combine this spatial analysis with both monetary and non-monetary valuation methods to better capture the benefit wlands provide to society. So how does this information influence decision making? Recently Uruguay approved an amendment to its uh water code establishing legal protection for wetlands of environmental importance. Under this regulation, drainage and other activities that degradate the wetlands are prohibited. Initially, environmental importance, wetlands are were identified using ecological criteria such as size, biodiversity, and proximity to urban areas. Our natural capital assessment complemented this process by identifying to wetland that also provide the greatest benefits to society through ecosystem service. As a result, the assessment provides an evidence base for implementing and monitoring the new regulation while also supporting future land use planning and the development on of additional policy instrument for wlands both inside and outside the currently protected areas. And let me finish uh one result that illustrate why this work matters. Considering only three ecosystem service, carbon storage, flood mitigation and water supply, the annual value generated by one ectar of wetland is approximately three times higher than the market rental value of agricultural land in Uruguay. [snorts] We also found that wetlands currently protect 8% of Uruguay's coastal population from coastal hazard and under future climate change scenarios this figure could increase to 19%. This findings help demonstrate that the conservation conservating wetlands is not only an environmental policy, it's also a sound economic investment and a key strategy for building residence to climate change. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Thank you very much, Veronica. The next presenter is from my own country, Ecuador. Ecuador, Francisco Lopez. Francisco Lopez is the under secretary of the macroeconomic management at the minister of finance in Ecuador. He worked previously in the central bank of Ecuador and the national secretary of planning and development. He is economist from the Pontifysia University Catholica de Ecuador and he has a master degree from the University of Barcelona. He will present our pro pilot project in Yasuni Bospera Biospera research in the Amazon region in Ecuador. Thank you very much and welcome Francisco. [applause] >> Thank you very much Dual. I will be the first that present or make his presentation in Spanish. So I'm glad to see the first one I think. Okay. Fore territorial. for agricola. Natural Capital Alliance Forefiv. system investig business as usual. roots are prevent. polit Forestrument. services. Institution much. [applause] Francisco. The flying rivers. This is part the the Yasuni Rio reserve is part of the flying rivers in the Masonian region. Thank you very much Francisco. H the next presenter is Narayan Ayar. Narayan Ayer is the principal natural resource and agricultural specialist and the Asan development banks. He leads the development of a regional natural capital lab and concessional natural capital funds. He he works in many projects across Asia Pacific including E Sri Lanka and Armenia. He is going to present do two pilot projects in Sri Lanka and Armenia. Thank you very much and welcome Nar. [applause] >> Thanks Tom. Thank you and thanks for the introduction. Uh and thanks for tolerating me for a second time but I will be back. I threaten you. [laughter] Uh so uh uh I've actually I I made some slides but I think I'll only show one slide on Sri Lanka and Armenia I'll probably just talk through. Uh so I think by now the audience is kind of aware of uh what uh the pilot assessments uh in general were about so I'm not going to dwell specifically on on on on the concept but I'll directly dive into Sri Lanka. Uh I haven't uh put a map of Sri Lanka here in retrospect I think I should have. So it's it's the pearl of the Indian Ocean. It's you know an island that is shaped like a pearl which is why it's called pearl of the Indian Ocean. uh and the southern part of Sri Lanka is is where its water resides and you know Sri Lanka gets rainfall mainly through the southwest monsoon and a little bit of the receding monsoon as well but mainly southwest and the way the terrain is and the way the climate you know uh is most of the rainfall is you know coming down from the south and as it uh as the clouds go over the north it just doesn't rain. So the northern part is fairly dry and is scarce. It's water scarce whereas the southern part has excess water. So we've been helping you know the uh government to uh to uh figure out how to you know [snorts] use the excess water in the south in the north. And uh uh we've had we've done uh we've helped them uh set up irrigation projects that can take water from the excess in the south and deliver it to the north. Uh now the problems there are obviously you know issues with every project. So with this project as well we [snorts] found that uh over a period of time there is a reduction in the amount of water that is you know going through from south to north. Uh and uh the risk of you know that continuing to happen uh was of course uh significant and uh we also you know in our plan uh had a phase two of this project where we would enhance the irrigation capacities as the you know country grows and as the population in the north also grows. uh so which meant that any fresh investment that you know uh both the government and ADB would make was subject to the same risk and perhaps you know higher degree of risk. uh and we we thought that you know we would use this pilot to demonstrate how a project could be designed to you know uh use data use analytics to reduce risks uh and maybe also inform ways of uh you know how you can mitigate that risk uh okay so I'm being asked to leave [laughter] uh the So I have taken a little bit of time to explain the context because I think that's important. uh you know otherwise you you it it's very easy to say okay I have these invest models I have models for you know SDR I have models for uh tourism I have models for whatever else and uh uh and then you know some input and there's some output uh but if you understand the context it helps to uh to so what we did here was we applied inverse models we applied this you know sediment delivery ratio models uh primarily to figure out you know the sedimentation and the you know soil erosion that was causing the sedimentation in the you know irrigation pipes [snorts] uh and also some of the uh you know water sheds uh there where sedimentation was reducing the storage capacity of of so the idea was to figure that out and also look at potential solutions the solution that we we examined and it's not the only solution but the solution we examined was you know how see Sri Lanka has a lot of tea that's grown and that part of Sri Lanka also has a significant amount of tea gardens uh so we examined conversion of some of the tea gardens into forest land you know grow more vegetation so that the erosion of soil is reduced uh and we applied you know the optimization models the root optimization to uh to evaluate different scenarios. For instance, what if you convert all the tea you know growing areas into forest or what if you convert only you know part of it into forest or what if you don't convert any u and you have cost and benefits in all these scenarios and you know the pilot recommended a particular scenario obviously somewhere in between. >> [snorts] >> Uh the one unique thing about this pilot was the involvement of you know the local stakeholders both local researchers, local academicians, local government uh in this process uh and we also uh undertook a training of uh you could say training the trainers uh so that they could uh you know go out and advocate for these kind of approaches to better inform form uh you know uh projects in the country. Uh we relied initially on the on global data for these models. uh there was some amount of I think tweaking uh for local uh uh uh you know but but uh during the training of trainers it was quite clear uh to everyone that you need more local data and bringing together all the local stakeholders also makes it easier for you know for the pilot for for the analytics uh access to local data becomes much easier when people locally are convinced it's not that data cannot be collected just that people are not convinced about the importance of doing that. Uh let me stop here. I think I have run out of time for Armenia but if you give me one minute okay >> I'll just you know quickly I'll just I'll just kind of just state what we did there. So uh Armenia has six major river basins. Uh we selected one of those river basins called Ararat River Basin. uh every river basin has uh a river basin management plan and these plans uh are updated every 5 years and they have their own staggered schedule. So it's not that every river basin is doing at the same time. Uh so when we were uh planning this pilot uh there were two or there were three river basins that we could have you know gone with we chose the Ararat river basin because that's a significant one. That's where the capital Yavan is. It contributes to 30% of the country's GDP. Uh so we went to the government and we agreed with them that we would you know look at uh uh assessments the you know assessments of the ecosystems there to figure out the contribution of these ecosystems to that you know to the Ararat River. uh how they impact the quality of water, how they impact the flow of water, which are the specific ecosystem that are important, what is the relative importance uh [laughter] sorry Tom at the risk of you know being veiled outside at night [laughter] I'm going to take a few more seconds uh so so our assessment you know also valued uh those that uh river basin I I mean it was some of the values of the ecosystems there of the benefits. Uh and uh we uh we wrote one chapter of the updated uh uh river basin management plan [snorts] uh where which dealt with the contribution of of the of natural capital in that river basin uh to uh uh to the rivers uh flow and quality. Uh some of the major stakeholders that benefited from this were you know the energy producers, the farmers, uh the fisher folk um and uh well I mean that river basin management plan is being adopted and we are uh uh we are hopeful that there will be action at a later stage uh on this uh which can lead to maybe potential investments to derisk uh the flow of the river. Incidentally, in the Sri Lanka project, uh we actually approved a $200 million loan in December 2025. And that loan, the design of that was informed uh to some extent by the by the analysis that the pilot did. I'll stop here, Tom. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. [applause] Thank you very much. Okay, we have question for the for the panel. I will short in the in the in the in the questions and I if you want Alvaro I I will do my my my question in Spanish for you. Alvaro Rio Chile. Thank you very much. Um I think that um the key element in this uh pilot was uh start from the beginning uh alto together uh scientists uh public policy managers, economists, researchers and of course the natural capital committee helps to that because uh that um includes several ministries regarding environment, finance, economy um and additionally the central bank and um a specific uh scientific um uh organization the CTCI um organization and so we had all together in the same table. Um and additionally uh we had the support of Stanford and a huge uh academic um team and additionally some Chilean uh scientist from uh universities. So um the pilot was uh designed in order to support a public policy considering this uh scientific approach. So I think that is uh was the key element and additionally um data uh of course uh that is another key element uh having um a very um accessible uh very um uh updated and useful information for policy uh and decision making. Um that is a key a key element. uh we had to collect data from different services uh and that is a challenge to have all this information in uh uh we hope in a one uh window um platform um and additionally the process I think that um taking into uh consideration all the objectives uh from different uh actors uh but from the I think that is a a key. >> Thank you very much Alvaro. Very very interesting approach in Chile. Jay from you in the Cook Islands. Uh how did the integration of natural capital evidence inform decision making in a small island content context and what lessons can be applied to strength science policy uptake and scaling across other island systems? Thanks for this question. [laughter] >> Um, so I think the one way that I see scaling happening is also through um kind of like sister initiatives like the UNDP blue green island program where they're working with 15 SIDS countries around the world to basically scale these approaches, embed them in policy coherence and uh help reform finance mechanisms. So it's nice to see that there is multiple efforts happening from different organizations that all aim towards similar goals. >> Okay. Thank you very much J for Veronica. I will do in Spanish. I turn to Spanish for for the question and Politician. Foreident Fore information. Perfect. Francisco. Green washing in. Mroconomics. Focus. Columbia. The final question is for Narayan. Narayan drawing on the pilots in Sri Lanka and Armenia. Why which financing modies models show the greatest potential to mobilize investment and how can multilateral development banks structure them to enable replication and scaling across many countries? >> Uh okay I mean honest answer is neither of these two projects showed any financial you know uh instrument or anything that could readily be available. >> Okay. But [snorts] in general uh what I would like to say is uh these kind of uh assessments where we may you know be able to uh come with some kind of valuation some kind of uh benefits projections uh from different ecosystems. Uh these are amanable to design for example uh payment for ecosystem service mechanisms. uh we have been doing you know this in other projects without you know having really uh done this kind of assessments uh I mean you can value uh you know a set of future cash flows or you can value any asset in any manner you don't have to do you know the assessments of this kind but if you do uh you know assessments based on data then you have a lot more confidence uh in the valuation numbers that you come up with [snorts] uh and uh you also would have some basis uh you know to uh on the basis of which you could agree with all the stakeholders involved. So for instance uh in in the case of Sri Lanka uh if we are to have uh you know the solution that was you know proposed for the tea gardens where uh we propose that you know some proportion of the tea gardens be converted to say forests so that now there is a loss of revenues for the owners of those tea gardens. So how should they be compensated? uh doing these kind of valuations or do doing these kind of assessments could you know form a basis for uh compensating them. Uh there could be other ways of determining this as well but this is one way. I mean you could you know uh you could design uh for instance uh bonds or you could design loans where the payment you know uh repayment part of it or maybe the coupon can be uh you know a function of the value underlying valuation of you know some of these services. If the future values if you conduct valuation let's say on an annual basis and and the valuation changes for instance you know then the payments uh uh underlying payments on these instruments could change so it could be a floating you know uh kind of a floating rate so >> thank you very much thank you very much for everybody thank you very much Jay thank you very much Alvaro Veronica Francis Disco and Nayan, you're you're amazing presenters and you are amazing showing your project pilots in your countries. This is only five of the pilot countries of the system around the world with the natural capital alliance. Ector Angarita will be the moderator of the next of the next panel and Ector who he will part of the private polls in Chile in Uruguay and Ecuador too. Ector you are very welcome to the second panel. [applause] Thank you very much. Yeah. Hi everyone. It's good to be here hosting this second panel. Uh we're going to move now into another element that we have worked in this in this three-piece project. Uh that is a fundamental part of the innovations that we're trying to drive across different countries which is how natural capital information enters into finance mechanism and investment decisions. Narayan was just precisely giving us a good segway into this when he was commenting during his answer the possibility to design different types of of of finance cycles based on on this natural capital information, bonds, payment systems, accounting framework, fiscal instruments. And so the idea is that we're going to have here direct information from four countries that develop this type of applications in the three-piece project. So um I'm going to well I'm going to introduce each of the panelists and for each of them we're going to have like five minutes four minutes sorry for a brief [clears throat] presentation and then we're going to have a few questions. I hope it's going to be a very interesting conversation with all our all our panelists today here. So first of all I would like to uh to start with Camilo Diaz from Colombia. Camilo is an economist with over 15 years of experience in natural capital and economic valuation and biodiversity finance and he's currently consulting for the interamerican development bank in Colombia. He worked for the Colombia's 3PB project in also being part of the government uh in 2024 which produced a biohysical and monetary valuation of ecosystem services from protected areas forming the quantitative basis for protected area reform under the new policy of Colombia to strengthen the the financing of protected areas and the new climate action law to implement natural capital accounting across the country. So welcome Camilo. >> [applause] >> Hi everyone. I'm going to give the presentation in Spanish. [clears throat] Capital interdisiplinario Natural Capital Alliance, Washington. Okay. Projection. Capital natural. Seech. Columbia Claria. >> [applause] >> Yeah, thank you Camilo. Um, now I would like to uh invite Beverly Wade. Erh she's the chief executive officers of BISE ministry of blue economy and marine conservation with over 25 years of experience in fisheries management marine conservation sustainable financing and carbon markets in the biz three piece pilot design keys key performance indicators covering coastal ecosystem health fisheries tours and inclusive governance forming the monitoring reporting and verification system underpinning the country's 364 billion million blue bond and project finance for performance. So, welcome Beverly. [applause] Thank you very much. I'll try to keep up with the brutal timekeeper. [laughter] Um, so Biz is a natural um is is a nature-based economy. 70% of our GDP is said to be directly linked to to nature in Bise. And so for us um we see nature positive economics as being central to our prosperity and our development. So the trapeze project for us um basically allowed us to actively anchor our sustainable blue economic development in resultsbased finance. Um it is helping us develop a set of 34 KPIs covering environmental, economic and social indicators to explicitly track nature people connections. So while our historic blue bun agreement was successfully was successful, um unleashing future results based financing requires scientific proof of progress. And so this pilot for us centralizes our national framework linking ecosystems health directly to socioeconomic outcomes and providing the rigorous foundation which is required for upcoming instrument like our project finance for permanence and future outcomebased financing frameworks. For us, natural capital information has been central to our planning. We are a country that has made its mark really in looking at planning especially within our blue space. And so we we aren't really starting from scratch. We consider ourselves now a proof of concept which we're very much proud of. Um we are actually proud that from 2016 we've been using Stanford's invest and root tools to model future scenarios and embedding them um along with habitat maps and risk into our integrated coastal zone planning. And I'm very happy and pleased to announce that we've used those tools again in our recently revised integrated coastal zone management plan that was endorsed by parliament in November of last year. Um, and now this year we're hoping to deliver our marine spatial plan for entire ocean space reinforcing the data coming out of these tools. And so we're simply moving beyond tracking ecosystems. Um but we're looking at measuring the socioeconomic contributions of natural capital to the economy and well-being. The frameworks for us we believe is gamechanging and it's building a centralized framework to turn raw data into investable assets. And so for us there are three main objectives. unifying our data and that's to allow us to prove to our partners and our citizens that nature positive investments are yielding tangible social and ecological results. It allows us to be um more successful at adaptive management and very importantly it allows us to have trusted verifiable baselines to now trigger payouts and rewards um in our progress in monetizing natural capital in biz. Um finally I just want to say that in terms of the 3P's project it has allowed us to make major step in bridging the nexus in policy and finance and it will allow us to create a national dashboard where these KPIs will be accessible to decision makers, policy makers, users at large and it allows us to have more policy alignment rather Rather than acting in isolated exercises, the Tree Peace Project has allowed us to be more integrated and to prove to international markets that our natural capital assets are functioning effectively, thereby helping us to derisk some of the credit gaps that we face within our blue economy, especially within our MSMES. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Thank you so much Beverly. Now I would like to um call to the stage to do director Laurelin Claudio. Director Laurel Cladio serves as director for of the ecosystem research and development bureau under the Philippines department of environment and natural resources with an extensive career in public service including pri prior leadership across multiple regional offices of the environment management bureau of Philippines. In this pilot, Philippines developed a watershed ecosystems account to support implementation of the 2024 Pankas Act, establishing a national mandate for national natural capital accounting and the design of an ADB policy based loan for this institutionalization nationwide. So, welcome Director Lur Melon. [applause] >> Thank you, Hector. Good afternoon my co-etakers of the environment and natural resources. Let me share with you the Philippine experience which demonstrates that transformation occurs when NCA is embedded within existing institutions, the planning systems and stakeholder processes. Traditional economic indicators such as the g gross domestic product measure current production and income but they do not account for the condition depletion or enhancement of the natural assets that sustain economic activity. Forest can be cleared, fisheries depleted, watersheds degraded and biodiversity lost. While economic output may continue to increase in the short term, yet these changes impose significant long-term cost on societies, economies, and future generations. Natural capital accounting addresses this gap. NCA recognizes ecosystems as productive assets that generate benefits essential to human well-being and economic prosperity. By systematically measuring ecosystem extent, condition and the services nature provides, NCA makes this contribution visible in planning, policy and investment decision. In doing so, NCA fundamentally changes how development is understood. It shifts the question from how much economic growth are we generating today to are we maintaining the natural capital that will sustain prosperity in the future for countries whose economies and communities depend heavily on natural resources. This perspective is particularly important. The Philippines is one such country. The Philippines is among the world's most biodiversity rich and climate vulnerable nations with development pathways deeply intertwined within the health of ecosystems. Watershed support water security, agriculture, disaster resilience, biodiversity conservation, energy production and local livelihoods. The country has 2,224 delineated waterheds and 131 of these are priority waterheds. Many of these directly support irrigation systems, domestic water supply, agriculture and other economic activities. [snorts] Because of this watershed decisions are fundamentally development decisions. Environmental sustainability, food security, water security, disaster resilience and local livelihoods are inseparable from ecosystem health. NCA therefore provides a framework for ensuring that nature is recognized not as an external concern but as a core component of national wealth and sustainable development. The question for the Philippines was never whether natural capital matters. The real challenge was how to incorporate the value of nature into actual government planning, investment, and decision making processes. The three-piece initiative is a global effort led by Stanford University's natural capital project together with the development partners including ADB, IDB, and the World Bank. The initiative aims to uh integrate the value of nature into development policy and investment decision across participating countries in the Philippines. We are so thankful that ADB and Stanford provided technical assistance to DNR in the form of capacity building. Stanford's natural capital alliance delivered capacity building using the invest tool and ecosystem service modeling that was so helpful for the country. ADB also supported valuation and policy related capacity development. However, DNR made an important strategic decision. Rather than conducting standalone training activities, the capacity building effort was anchored in an actual government project. This became what we call now the DNR ERDB's vulnerability assessment and natural capital accounting project. The VANCA project goal was to determine whether NCA could be integrated into existing government systems. We now have the Stomas watershed which becomes a demonstration site for testing how NCA could support real world watershed management. The VACA project was implemented in Stomas Watershed in Sales and it combined watershed characterization and vulnerability assessment, ecosystem accounting concepts, ecosystem service assessment, environmental monitoring, stakeholder engagement and it generated information on ecosystem condition, vulnerability, carbon sedimentation, sediment retention I should say, water related EOS system services. But the most important question was not what information could be generated. The more important question was how can how can this information influence planning and management decisions. This required moving beyond assessment. It required governance. Information alone does not change outcomes. Institutions and stakeholders do to support utilization of projects. results. DNR convened the stakeholders consultation and action planning workshop two weeks ago and the workshop shifted the discussion from assessment output toward implementation. Stakeholders work together to validate the project findings, identify priority interventions and clarify governance rules. Okay, this the June workshop is not the end of the process. A follow-up activity is scheduled for September and the results from the workshop and succeeding engagement will also contribute to a policy brief intended to support future um institutionalization. Okay. Now um let me share with you the transition. The experience reinforce an important lesson. NCA implementation cannot be accomplished by a single agency. So we have departments that handle aquan comp compilation, policy integration and development planning and translation of information into local action. The Philippine experience demonstrates that NCA becomes transformational when it moves beyond accounting. It becomes transformational when it strengthens institutions, improves planning, supports governance, enables collaboration, informs investments, and helps translate environmental information into decisions. The Philippines is still early in its NCA journey. However, through Pencast, the three-piece partnerships, the VANCA project, and stakeholder-driven implementation efforts, we are beginning to move from assessment toward institutionalization. And ultimately, that is what sustainable development requires. Not simply understanding nature, but ensuring that nature is systematically considered in how decisions are made. That is how we could translate the novel concept of sustainable development into practical reality. Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Director Lorine. Uh now, finally, I would like to call Dr. Tong Woo. is a senior scientist here at the natural capital alliance at n at Stanford University where he leads China related initiatives and research focused on mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision making and economic planning uh with a focus on the gross economic gross ecosystem product that we going to hear more in future sessions of of the event for this project Dr. Tong Wu directed the project of the South Donging Lake producing a GDP evaluation of 49 billion yuan that now fits into a dual framework for GDP GDP performance metrics and an echo compensation program that is incentivizing land stewardship and restoration. So welcome Dr. Du [applause] Hector. Do you want me to do this in Spanish? >> Someone asked me u what El Nino meant in English once and I said I think it means the Nino. Um so uh I don't have slides uh but I guess I'll just talk until someone stops me. Um as Hector mentioned um a lot of uh my work and and the work of many others at NACAP is focused on this indicator called gross ecosystem product which you heard about earlier today from professor Oang from uh professor Steve Paskki and in this particular project we worked with our Asia Development Bank colleagues uh Nion um and others to uh pilot the the accounting and with an eye to future application of uh GP in South Ding Lake. Now, Dunting Lake is the second largest freshwater lake in China. It's one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia and it's also a major node in the uh regional flyway uh and so the regional flyway initiative is uh for migratory birds is also another key project of of our ADB friends. And so we realized that this particular pilot was had very special characteristics and by p you know innovating the application of of GP here we could you know potentially meet several goals at the same time. So Donting Lake it's situated in the Yangti River Basin uh and so it's a it's a very crucial watershed uh for this uh entire river basin in which more than 400 million people live. But at the same time, Daunting Lake is under a lot of land use pressures. The land use pressures from urbanization. In to the south of Daunting Lake, there's a a very large urban elomeration. Uh and to the north, there's a lot of agriculture. And so, you know, this is a ecosystem. This is a eco region that's being kind of pressured from multiple sides and by multiple land development pressures. So we wanted to use GP as a way to account uh to reveal the economic value of this vital ecosystem uh in order to kind of ward off or potentially channel in different directions some of those land use pressures. One of the key things to to note about what our calculations found was that over 60% of South Ding Lakes's GDP is in regulating services. And so this is the regulating services such as uh climate regulation, uh flood mitigation, water retention. So many of those functions that make nature a form of infrastructure as you heard about this morning. And so we were um you know very uh interested with that result because you know as climate change continues at pace you know this is going to be one of the the areas that's going to see a lot of um climate impacts and so you know the value of G that GDP is revealing in this particular case is also a form of climate resilience. Your signs don't scare me. Uh but you know I should say that you know this this GP project that we did in South Dunin Lake is you know just one of many uh applications of GP across China as you heard from professor Oang this morning you know GP is being piloted uh not piloted but adopted by cities by provinces and increasingly at the national level and you know the I should say a few words about you know to demystify what GDP is and it isn't it's GDP sounds very much like gross domestic product but it's you know meant not to be a replacement but to be a partner or a compliment. So whether in South Ding Lake or elsewhere in China and elsewhere in the world that we're uh applying GDP, we're doing it as kind of a a eco-friendly friend or accomplice uh to GDP. We're not using it to replace GDP because we think GDP still captures a lot of useful information, but what it leaves out is what we hope to to capture with gross ecosystem product. So thank you. >> [applause] >> Well, thank you everyone for your presentations or for all describing the the project in this very brief time. I know it's a big effort to to keep the to describe all the work that has been done in in such a little time. So, uh I'm going to have an even better challenge now. I'm going to ask you to reply very shortly. Um so, let's start with Camilo. Camilo, you you wrapped up your presentation with a very interesting graphic that we couldn't read, but it was sort of like a pathway between economic valuation and then financing instruments for biodiversity. And so I would like to follow up a little bit on that like can you go a little bit uh in more details to tell us how do you go from economic valuation of natural capital to define the structure and the value to pay in the economic in the financing instrument that you're considering for Colombia. Um please reply in Spanish if you're more comfortable with Okay. Projector. system econom. Ambientract. See? Fore. Thank you so much, Camilo. I would like now to follow up with with Beverly. Um Beverly Belise sets an example from financing approaches that are that are linking natural capital evidence with investment commitments through the blue bond initiative. Um what would be your your your thoughts in terms of how this model could be adapted to mobilize resources for coastal conservation in other small island or coastal states. >> So I believe that the bleian model is very much um scalable. Um but one of the things that um is important is that it it has to one be based on data. And so that is one of the that is one of the important areas when you're looking at these um results based financing mechanisms because at the end of end of the day you have to have some way of now tracking the impact that it's having um on the ground and so having that national planning um like Colombia and some and the other countries are now working on where where um goals are set out very clearly in these broader instruments is important. And I think the the other thing is um to to um look at the the to have that the needs from a nature and people perspective clearly identified nationally that you can then incorporate into these financing um mechanisms at the end of the day to come back and have the real impact on the ground so that we can um realize the additionality in conservation um that we really need to um realize at the end of the day. And so the projects like the three piece projects and the MRV systems that we're working on allows us to attain a certain level of readiness. And so I think that is something that is easily transferable to to small countries. It doesn't have to be complex but it's to start that system so that you have the basis for incorporation of these targets that are looking at nature and people at the end of the day in these um financing mechanisms. >> Yeah, thank you. I may maybe a quick follow up with you uh because um well you you used a word that was very interesting in your presentation. You use the word permanence. I think that's a feature of what's happening in BISE. Yeah. >> It's a long-term effort. >> You're setting the example of how institutions need to maintain. And so do you have recommendations also regarding permanence? How how do you achieve long-term institutionalization of these efforts? >> Right. So one of the things for us with regards to permanence, it's it's two things really. It's a start. So we started with our blue bonds and what we did was to leverage the success of the blue bonds now to complement to to seek additional finance to complement what we were doing with the blue bonds and to look at long-term financing for that. So we started the blue bonds and then we're looking at a project for finance permanence to strengthen what we're delivering on the blue bond and now we're looking at outcome based financing to further strengthen and bringing what you're looking for at the end of the day is a sustained um financing in the sector that that you can only have in my view through the combination and complementing instruments that are looking at various aspects that you want financing for. So not just for nature um conservation but now looking at um people livelihoods um how do we ensure that what we're doing is both nature positive and people positive at the end of the day and the last thing I'm going to say is that permanence also requires that from an institutional standpoint we become as integrated as possible and that we um ensure that those silos that we have traditionally ally worked in um whether it's from government or partners that we now have a more integrated approach to ensure that the systems that we have in place are able to to now um in a in a successful way implement track and to and to adapt at the end of the day. And when you have that in place, the um there's more appetite for investment >> and there's more appetite for non-traditional um financing to come into the the um realm that you're now working in. >> Yeah. Thank you so much, Beverly. Um now I would like to to ask question to director Lord Meline. Um, you you you show this very interesting vision and pathway for the Philippines to to implement in this in this this legislative mandate you have through the Pankas law to advance into national level national capital accounting and um and also integrate this at a decision level like watershed planning etc. So I would like to ask you like what's do you think is the most critical element that is still needed and especially in terms of capacity to implement this scale? What's what's the next step for the Philippines in terms of capacity? >> Yeah, thank you Hector. In the implementation of the VACA project, we found that um there is there is a big gap. Okay. So with that gap, we intend to do more monitoring. Monitoring is crucial. When you say monitoring, you just don't don't go inspect the areas, but you have to install instrumentations. Instruments are very critical and of course data management for the DNR uh the ERDB in particular the office which I had we have established already the artificial intelligence knowledge hub. So that whatever we gather uh on ground should now be uh uploaded and uh analyzed and and of course uh for researchers of the DNR to make use of it. Another thing is capacity building. So we would like that uh the Stanford uh and the National Capital Alliance would still help the the Philippines in capacity building because we are not just capacitating the DNR the field officers. We will be capacitating the counterparts, the local government units. We try to do that by our team did that in uh as I said two weeks ago and uh the stakeholders the local government units are so glad that we are reaching them out and uh we actually did action planning. So we validate they validated the uh findings that we have uh done and uh what we will be going it doing further is that um this local uh officers will have to report that to their principles meaning the local leaders so that it would be institutionalized. So after this after the September uh workshop that we'll be having we'll come up with policy brief and hopefully that will be replicated not just in Stomas uh area but also nationwide hopefully. >> Thank you. >> Oh thank you so much. Um I have another question for you but I I'll I'll come back to you. Um now I would like to um ask a question to Dr. Dong Wu. Um based on your your experience in the in the doning lake in with this dual GDP GDP reporting framework uh what what institutional arrangement made it possible to embed ecosystem values into the economic performance evaluation? I mean how can the model be structured for replication across different counties of China? So the application of GP has been um diverse uh because it many ways it's a very versatile indicator and a tool. It um some of the the primary decision-m context in which we've seen GP deployed is uh I'll just give three broad categories. One is to track performance. So you can track the pro the performance of a a certain project or you can track the performance of a policy maker or administrators uh use that as a KPI right to incentivize um incentivize good behavior. Um and then the other context is in in green finance and so um actually I lied there's four contexts. So the second one is in green finance. The so we're experimenting with developing financial mechanisms such as parametric insurance uh products or uh GP link bonds. So that's another decision-m context. And then the third one would be in uh in China we broadly call ecompensation but it's very related to payments for ecosystem services. So using GP as the rubric by which to calibrate the the amount and the and the um the this the the bene the the the b linking the beneficiaries and the suppliers. Um and then the fourth one is just the use and land use planning identifying where in the landscape is producing the greatest economic value and then you know prioritizing those areas for restoration and protection. Um, yeah. Again, I I want to say this isn't it's GP isn't meant to replace a gross domestic product. Um, they're meant to be friends. It's like a it's like a buddy caught movie. You know, one's Chris Tucker and one's Jackie Chan. You know, they work together. >> Yeah. Fantastic. Um, well, we're we're on time for this panel. I would love to stay here talking with you. It's so interesting to hear all the experience of different perspectives. um we need to move on to the next part of the of the session but I will ask everyone to please a big a big applause for for our panelists today. [applause] Thank you for your participation. Um of course I invite everyone in the audience to reach out to our panelists today to learn more about these projects. They are very interesting case uh applications of natural capital and you see there is so much else so much to do and hopefully they will be interested in in in starting to to align and contribute around this. Um well okay so now to for the panel wrap up I would like to invite Kim Bonai the director of capacity development at natural capital alliance uh for a quick um for a quick close uh session of of this this event. Well, thank you, Kim. And uh Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks everyone. I will be brief because I know I stand between you and coffee. Um so thank you so much um all of the panelists for your just wonderful experience and stories and for sharing all of these great lessons of success and these these deep engagements and assessment processes that really um illuminated these values of nature and the benefits and really uh successfully integrated them into decisions into policies into investments. So I just wanted to share um kind of three takeaways that I wanted to leave you with um that draw from this panel or these two panels as well as some of the things we heard earlier today. Um just the first is that policy impact and um impact on investments is happening now. We have all of these concrete examples and um stories of success of how natural capital approaches, how these assessments are positively impacting environmental and social policies from land use planning, zoning, biodiversity, compensation, um infrastructure development, national accounting. Um, and so we're we're figuring out how to do this and we're figuring out how to do this well. And I would say there's there's um kind of what we've learned is that it needs to be the right information at the right time to the right people. And that's all really important. And I think all of what we've heard has really laid out the importance of that. Um and so the right information there's a lot of aspects of that from mapping to scenarios to feasibility analysis really understanding who is benefiting from what and where and how might that change with a decision or a policy who wins who loses um how do we look at those tradeoffs and then the right time. I think um it's a a thread we've heard again and again is the right time is early early early and it's upstream it's early in the planning process. Um I think the idea of uh nature is infrastructure. If we have a development goal and we ask ourselves how might we best reach that goal and we bring nature into the process at the outset we can find better ways to reach those development goals. when we wait until later, it's often then very difficult to figure out how to address issues related to impacts on nature and then the right people. I think this is one of the most exciting pieces that we've seen um throughout today is this idea of these integrated cross ministerial transversal teams that were a fundamental part of these engagements and really fundamental to their success. And if anything, what we learned through the past couple of years is that this is about relationships and this is about building trust. And oftentimes we move at the speed of trust. And the time or the time effort um that it takes to build relationships is just as much as it takes to gather data and run analyses and models. So building relationships and trust is absolutely fundamental to the success of what we are all trying to do and the change we're trying to create in the world. The other thing we've seen um kind of the second big point is how we translate economic value into financial flows. So identifying that something has economic value meaning social benefits, human well-being, human welfare does not mean money starts falling from the sky. So economic value is not the same as cash flow. Those are very different. So how do we translate value into finance into ways to pay for things? And that's a theme that has come up again and again. And um there's a lot of different innovations happening, a lot of exciting work um being done and still to be done. But I also love the emphasis on just as much as we need to think outside the box about these different ways of financing nature, we can't forget about the box because what's in the box is also really important. some of those basic domestic budgets, things that we already know how to do and to make sure that we don't get distracted by all the shiny new objects. Um, and I think also as part of that box holding the burden of proof of economic feasibility of development the same as we are taking on that burden of proof for nature stewardship. And then the other piece I wanted to emphasize is and that we've heard throughout today is replicating, expanding and scaling. And this idea that how can we replicate this easier and faster? How can we scale? And I think one of the ways we've seen is back to learning each other's languages, creating these sort of cross- sectoral teams and institutional guidance and mechanisms and frameworks. Um, so if we create a common language and I spent 20 years over 20 years teaching economics to environmental professionals, when we can start talking to each other, we start talking with each other instead of past each other. And so that's really key. And so there are many ways in which all of our institutions and organizations are working towards how do we share more effectively? How do we build capacity? Um we've heard talk about the MOO that um Stanford NATCAP and IDB has just launched and that was an incredible collaborative effort of co-development of also learning each other's language ecologists economics development banks learning how to talk to one another and share out this information um along with the implementation toolkit of just really practical guidance of how can we really replicate this. Um, and then another idea that we wanted to share with you, um, that we want to kind of hear your feedback throughout the coming days is this idea of a a natural capital country champions network. We want to keep this momentum going. All of you are champions. You're doing this incredible work and we want to help facilitate you continuing to share this um, with other people, with other countries. And so it's kind of a a light touch idea that um we'll continue to discuss with you throughout these coming days and please um reach out to me about it. Um so just in summary um you all are here, you all are already listening, you're leading, you are diplomats and ambassadors. Um we we know natural capital approaches work and we know how to do them. We are growing the ways in which we can create financial flows for nature and we need to keep the momentum going. We need to scale and we need to share experiences and capacity not just in how to do assessments but how to institutionalize these processes. So we're so excited to have you all here over the coming days and we hope we can continue these conversations um and keep as I said let's keep the momentum going. So thank you all. Enjoy your coffee break. >> [applause]