Penguin Perspectives Blog

South Pole ensures environmental, social and financial sustainability for biodiversity conservation projects in a territory, working in partnership with local communities, adding value to operations and investments, and promoting/ implementing Nature Based Solutions .

MPower rolls out innovative solar solutions across sub-saharan Africa, which will now also include the generation of D-RECs for companies seeking to boost their renewable energy commitments.

We live in paradoxical times. On the one hand, many financial institutions are ramping up their sustainability work while at the same time maintaining - or even increasing - investments in the fossil fuel sector. Some even use their sustainability claims to divert attention from their nefarious actions. 

CCUS is an essential tool to meet climate goals, but the complex systems surrounding it require strong collaboration across sectors to reach its potential.

Permanent carbon removals will play a vital role in the ‘race to zero.’ But efforts to scale up technological carbon dioxide removals are facing systemic challenges. How can policymakers help scale carbon removal activities within and beyond Europe?

A year ago, at the launch of COP26's Private Finance Agenda, David Attenborough called on the finance sector to take the lead on climate action and nature protection. He has since laid out the shocking reduction in wilderness between the 1930s to today in his 2020 Netflix documentary. In parallel, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the link between biodiversity and financial risk ever more clear.

Attractive investment cases for nature-based solutions are key to unlocking the growing interest among private capital to meet demands for nature conservation.

Flash forward: it is 2075 and we’ve set sail for the RCP 8.5 trajectory for 2100, the worst case climate scenario according to the IPCC. Imagine this: Pacific islands such as Tuvalu have long sunk into a rising ocean, heat and pollution take a toll on the global population, hurricanes and fires devastate poor communities on a regular basis, and huge swaths of Asia and Africa have become uninhabitable due to heat and drought. Quick shift back to the present: luckily we are not there. However, we are still far away from the emissions trajectory necessary for a 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming.

The core aspect of innovating to find new sources of financing for green infrastructure is identifying the multiple beneficiaries and monetizing their benefits. Green infrastructure in a city benefits all citizens’ well-being, but certain citizens, businesses, investors, and public departments will have additional financial benefits from well-designed green infrastructure. By capturing a small portion of these benefits that result from public investments, local governments can partly or entirely finance the investment and maintenance costs of green infrastructure.

By working with nature, we can avoid unleashing ‘irrecoverable carbon’ and conserve biodiversity – a cornerstone of our economic and social fabric that affects the industries we have and the food we eat. This is something that REDD+ projects (‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’) are working to do.