Nature Finance Futures: Exploratory scenarios for nature-positive financial systems

Financial actors distribute capital, determining which activities grow and influence the structure of the economy. Recently, many financial institutions have expressed interest in reducing nature degradation and increasing investments in nature-positive activities. To date, most initiatives have focused either on quantifying nature-related financial risks or on reframing nature as an investable asset. While valuable, these approaches alone are unlikely to meet global nature goals. By primarily emphasizing the instrumental value of nature, they risk reinforcing a narrow conception of value and overlooking the diverse ways people and organizations already act to protect and restore nature.

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) suggests that at least three main value perspectives - Nature for Society, Nature as Culture, and Nature as Nature – describe most ways in which people relate to nature, and that planning or management for nature should consider and track these multiple values. To expand the universe of nature-related financial activities, we combine Nature Futures scenarios with a systems approach to finance, to analyse how existing and emerging financial instruments could align with different nature values.

Building on the illustrative NFF scenarios developed by Duran et al. (2023) and informed by a systems analysis of finance (Crona et al. 2025), we examine how core financial functions could be performed in six nature-positive scenarios in which different nature-value perspectives dominate (NS, NS/NC, NC, NC/NN, NN, NN/NS). Specifically, we articulate how key financial actors such as banks, investors, and insurers perform core functions such as daily transactions, long-term funding for nature and social projects, and insurance in face of disasters in ways that align with the people–nature relationships envisioned in each scenario.

We develop a set of exploratory Nature Finance Futures that identify how different financial actors and activities could provide financial transactions, investment, and risk-sharing, connecting local needs for capital with global financial resources, in ways which support nature-positive futures embodying different nature value perspectives. These scenarios intersecting finance and the NFF respond to calls from both the financial community for more nature-focused futures and from the NFF community for applications of the NFF to create new scenarios.