Mainstreaming Natural Capital 2025

4Next steps The World Economic Forum welcomes engagement from the global natural capital community to advance the agenda. The World Economic Forum recognizes the value of the natural capital approach. The Forum inaugurated a dedicated workstream on natural capital in 2024 to elevate the approach in the global socioeconomic agenda and to mainstream its use in decision-making. This work forms part of the Forum’s broader multistakeholder efforts to unlock greater financing for nature, to tackle the global biodiversity finance gap which averages $711 billion annually.84 These efforts include: –Mainstreaming natural capital in global socioeconomic systems. –Guiding the finance sector’s transition to nature positive. –Championing innovative instruments to finance nature. In November 2024, the World Economic Forum hosted a convening on natural capital that brought together leading global thinkers and practitioners to develop an ambitious roadmap to mainstream natural capital. This led to the creation of the Forum’s Global Future Council (GFC) on Natural Capital 2025-26,85 which acts as custodian of this roadmap for the next two years. It comprises 25 experts in natural capital from diverse backgrounds and meets virtually and in-person throughout the year. The Council is informed by a simple, powerful vision: “Transform the economic paradigm to rebalance our relationship with nature” – supported by four goals, presented in Box 3. It aims to provide thought leadership and engagement to support governments, businesses, investors and civil society in mainstreaming natural capital in line with its vision and goals. The roadmap’s focus areas are broadly based on the five workstreams presented in Chapter 3 of this paper. The Council’s work will build on the achievements of existing coalitions and nurture new partnerships among the global natural capital community. Roadmap to mainstream natural capital BOX 3 Vision Goals 1. Move decision-making beyond produced capital to capture the full value of natural capital.* 2. Bring the value of nature onto public and private balance sheets. 3. Incentivize greater public and private finance to flow towards protecting, restoring and sustainably managing nature. 4. Embed values- and place-based approaches to reshape how institutions relate to and act on nature.Transform the economic paradigm to rebalance our relationship with nature. *Full value of natural capital – a definition: All categories of ecosystem services and their related socioeconomic benefits, encompassing not only: –Provisioning services and abiotic services (e.g. agriculture, products and services derived from nature) that are captured in economic statistics, but also: –Regulating services (e.g. water retention, flood mitigation, pollination, carbon sequestration) and cultural services (e.g. value to science, education, health, leisure) that are not captured in economic statistics. Mainstreaming Natural Capital: Advancing the Global Agenda to Integrate Nature in Decision-Making 17