Bringing Together Biodiversity and Finance: Lessons from the Financing Biodiversity Project
With biodiversity increasingly part of public and policy discussions, the financial sector has an interesting position in shaping sustainable investment strategies. The Financing Biodiversity project at Utrecht University explores exactly how institutional investors, specifically pension funds and their asset managers, can upscale nature-positive investments.
We spoke with Cătălina Papari and Sophie Klein, two researchers involved in the project, about the lessons learned from collaborating with pension funds, the tensions between climate and biodiversity, and the practical tools that can make sustainable finance genuinely impactful.
Mutual Learning with pension funds, asset managers and societal partners
“The conversations were highly enriching, complementing and completing what was missing from both academic and practitioner perspectives.,” Cătălina reflects. “Pension funds and partners like WWF bring strong motivation to advance biodiversity in finance, but turning that into actionable targets requires a shared language, shared knowledge, and an understanding of internal organizational dynamics.” Through workshops, mapping exercises, and targeted input sessions, the project team facilitated a process in which researchers and investors could learn from each other. “It’s about building trust and creating a space where everyone can contribute—without imposing a rigid agenda,” Sophie adds.
Shifting the Project Focus
Initially, the team entered the collaboration with fixed agendas and predefined goals. Yet early discussions with pension funds revealed different priorities. “We adapted our focus starting from the most urgent needs of the participants when it comes to biodiversity negative impact reduction, and based on the science-based inputs from biodiversity and finance research”, Cătălina explains. This iterative process included co-created guiding documents, homework assignments, and small feedback sessions that shaped the larger workshops.
We focus on enabling people within organizations to act, rather than trying to change entire structures overnight
Tensions in the Energy Transition
A recurring challenge is balancing climate gains from the energy transition with its resource-intensive impact on biodiversity. “In practice, teams often address climate and biodiversity separately,” Sophie notes. “Our role is to help organizations integrate these perspectives in synergy and translate them into actionable strategies.”
Practical Tools for Investors
Workshops, mapping exercises, and guiding documents proved invaluable for pension funds in incorporating biodiversity risks, particularly in sustainability transitions such as food and materials. These tools helped investors make informed decisions and align their portfolios with sustainability goals.
The best part of this PtS project is building bridges across disciplines and industry...
Emerging Impact
Already, the project has influenced how funds engage with asset managers and approach sectors that exert high pressure on biodiversity. “Real organizational change is incremental,” Sophie emphasizes. “We focus on enabling people within organizations to act, rather than trying to change entire structures overnight.”
Lessons for Other Projects
Transparency, trust, and early engagement are crucial. The incubator phase allowed stakeholders to get involved early and understand the logic behind contributions. “Success comes from teamwork, from knowing where your skills fit and where additional support is needed,” Sophie explains. ”The best part of this PtS project is building bridges across disciplines and industry on an issue of real societal consequence, and these collaborations will only grow,” Cătălina notes.
The Financing Biodiversity project demonstrates that linking research and practice requires careful facilitation, structured yet flexible processes, and a commitment to mutual learning. Most importantly, it shows that the path to sustainable investment is as much about people and relationships as it is about numbers and targets.
Event: A Pathway to a Nature-Positive Dutch Financial Sector
On November 28, the Financing Biodiversity team co-organized A Pathway to a Nature-Positive Dutch Financial Sector, an event that brought together investors, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to examine what it takes to integrate biodiversity into financial decision-making.
Opening the session, Sophie Klein emphasized that setting biodiversity targets is essential for creating coherence and signalling real responsibility for the nature transition. The academic team highlighted a core challenge: finance operates at the level of portfolios, while biodiversity exists—and is affected—at the level of places. Bridging this scale mismatch is crucial to achieving genuine landscape-level outcomes.
A Shared Structure Behind All Transitions
Drawing on transition theory, Lucas Simons showed that all sustainability transitions follow a shared structure: they begin with a clear, collectively defined vision of what it means to operate within planetary boundaries, move through phases where early adopters gain competitive advantage, and ultimately reach synergy as new practices reinforce each other and reshape the system.
Setting a Clear Direction of Travel for Investors
From the investor perspective, Sophie Kamphuis (MN) stressed the importance of setting a clear “direction of travel”: investors cannot wait for perfect data and must allocate capital where it matters most now. Representatives from NN, Achmea, and other financial institutions underscored that group-level targets only drive real change when translated into local implementation—where nature impacts actually occur. Discussions also pointed to differentiated approaches across asset classes, stronger governance and escalation pathways, and the need to coordinate existing initiatives to avoid fragmentation.
A Call for Courage and Collaboration
The day concluded with a collective reflection: while the financial sector still largely operates as “a house of money in the desert,” the next phase of the biodiversity transition demands courage, collaboration, and practitioner-led leadership. The message was unambiguous: identify the sectors where you can make a difference, analyze your impacts, and take action today to help build a nature-positive financial system.