Mobilizing private capital for nature: Evidence from a global survey of capital providers

Addressing global sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and ecosystem degradation requires levels of financing far beyond what public budgets can provide, especially in emerging and developing economies where nature-dependent risks and opportunities are most pronounced. Blended finance has emerged as a key mechanism to mobilize private capital toward nature-positive and biodiversity-enhancing investments, yet rigorous evidence on how investors perceive these opportunities remains limited. This paper presents a comprehensive global survey of CIOs, CROs, and CEOs across the full spectrum of capital providers, including foundations, family offices, impact investors, pension and sovereign funds, development finance institutions, and multilateral development banks, to map their expectations, preferences, and constraints when engaging in blended finance for sustainability and nature-related outcomes.

Our survey benchmarks investor risk tolerance, return expectations, and perceived impact across regions, sectors, and asset classes, with particular attention to capital allocation toward emerging and developing markets. Respondents report significantly higher perceived risks in EMDEs relative to developed markets, including political instability, currency volatility, and limited project pipelines, which directly constrain the scaling of nature-based and biodiversity-focused investments. We document substantial variation in the expected returns and default probabilities investors associate with blended finance vehicles, as well as heterogeneous views on the appropriate level of concessional capital required to crowd in private investors. Preliminary results also highlight key bottlenecks, including insufficient risk-sharing mechanisms, unclear impact measurement standards for biodiversity, and limited internal capacity to assess nature-related financial risks, that prevent many institutions from participating in blended finance.

By providing one of the first benchmarks of investor expectations for blended finance, this study advances transparency and understanding of how capital providers evaluate risk-return-impact trade-offs. Our findings offer actionable insights to improve the design of blended finance structures, strengthen public–private partnerships, and accelerate the flow of capital toward sustainable and nature-positive investments at scale.