An important next step is integrating nature into mainstream financial accounting. This means not just improving how natural capital is managed within sustainability reports, but recognizing the value of nature’s assets and services in core financial statements. Doing so can influence capital allocation, reshape incentives and make the business case for investing in nature more compelling. Initiatives such as Nature on the Balance Sheet, led by the Capitals Coalition, are exploring how to account for ecosystem services, natural assets and biodiversity-related risks and opportunities using established accounting standards and frameworks.72 Challenges include: –Defining which nature-relevant assets and liabilities should be recognized in financial statements. –Addressing methodological challenges such as consistency in valuation techniques, availability of nature-related data and attribution of ecosystem service flows. –Aligning with financial materiality thresholds and double materiality standards to ensure integration is technically credible and decision-useful. Markets and regulation must evolve in parallel to support this shift. Standard-setting bodies and regulators need to update disclosure frameworks, clarify fiduciary duties, and encourage financial institutions to reflect nature-related risks in loan covenants, insurance policies and investment mandates. By embedding nature into accounting infrastructure, companies can move beyond voluntary disclosures towards treating nature as a core strategic asset — one that is tracked, managed and stewarded with the same rigour as other capital inputs.3.3 Integrating natural capital into financial accounting The landscape of nature finance is developing rapidly, with nature emerging as a strategic investment frontier. A new nexus of ecologists, economists and financiers is helping investors understand new opportunities,73 while major investment houses have announced new nature funds.74 However, complexities abound: biodiversity data remains fragmented, ecosystem services are hard to price, and financial markets are only beginning to embed nature into decision-making. Markets alone cannot solve these challenges, but translating nature’s economic value into pricing systems acceptable to markets is an essential step towards mainstreaming natural capital. The key question is: can markets effectively price in good nature outcomes and drive price discovery without policy? Piloting at scale is urgently needed to answer this question – and to reveal the gaps between markets’ willingness to pay and the full value of natural capital. This will identify the extent to which regulators may need to correct market failures. A new insight report, Finance Solutions for Nature, published by the Forum in September 2025, presents 37 potential financial solutions to mobilize capital for nature. The main debate is between innovative, nature-specific instruments and more traditional, general-purpose instruments. The report shortlists 10 priority solutions with potential to deliver nature outcomes at sufficient scale and with investable returns. Five are general- purpose – sustainability-linked bonds and loans, thematic bonds and loans, plus impact funds. Five are purpose-built for nature – natural asset companies,75 environmental credits,76 debt-for- nature swaps, payments for ecosystem services77 and internal nature pricing.78 Convergence across these models is essential to achieve the scale of investment required. To move from the current fragmented landscape towards a mature global market for nature requires combining the familiarity, liquidity and simplicity of general-purpose finance with the credibility of nature-specific models that deliver positive impacts for ecosystems. To get there will take concerted action by a range of stakeholders. Standard-setters and auditors must drive alignment on natural capital accounting methods and decision-relevant data for investors. Development banks, donors and philanthropies must de-risk transactions with blended finance and first-loss capital. Venture studios and impact funds must help source, de-risk, scale up and aggregate an investment-grade pipeline of nature projects. Governments have a key role to create a stable, enabling environment of policy incentives and sanctions. And asset owners and boards must recognize their nature-related dependencies through an approach that balances risk, return and impact.3.4 Empowering traditional finance and markets to price in the full value of nature The key question is: can markets effectively price in good nature outcomes and drive price discovery without policy? Mainstreaming Natural Capital: Advancing the Global Agenda to Integrate Nature in Decision-Making 15

Mainstreaming Natural Capital 2025