Catalytic finance for nature restoration

Catalytic Facility for Nature-Based Carbon Removal

Early-stage nature-based solutions struggle to secure commercial seed capital because of their perceived risk, despite the urgent need to scale ecosystem restoration and carbon removal. Our facility is designed to unlock catalytic capital from foundations through early, risk-bearing instruments such as loans, grants, technical assistance, and subordinated debt—to finance land acquisition and the first three years of restoration. Developed with support from the Innosuisse CDR Booster.

Bridging the gap between restoration potential and investable scale

Nature-based carbon removal projects require significant early investment before they can demonstrate the operational track record needed to attract commercial and institutional capital. Land acquisition, ecological planning, project development, and the first years of restoration must often be funded when perceived risk is at its highest.

The Catalytic Facility is being designed to address this bottleneck. It brings together catalytic capital, restoration expertise, scientific knowledge, and financial structuring to help credible projects move from early development to investable scale.

Foundations can provide the catalytic spark

Foundations are well positioned to absorb early-stage risk and help credible restoration projects reach the point at which commercial and institutional investors can participate. The facility aims to use this catalytic role to unlock a potential 10× leverage effect in follow-on capital.

In return, foundations can benefit from:

Holistic impact

Recycling capital

Assets under management decarbonization

Support direct and verifiable climate, biodiversity, and social benefits through landscape-scale ecosystem restoration.

Participate in a rolling model in which early investments are repaid as institutional capital enters, allowing proceeds to seed subsequent restoration cohorts.

Access high-integrity carbon dioxide removal credits that can contribute to addressing the carbon footprint associated with a foundation’s assets under management.

Explore the Facility

Testing the model in practice

Under the Innosuisse CDR Booster program, the project is testing three essential dimensions of the facility:

Desirability

Feasibility

Viability

Validating alignment with the objectives, requirements, and impact priorities of Swiss foundations.

Developing an effective legal, financial, governance, and operational structure.

Testing whether catalytic commitments can mobilize follow-on commercial and institutional capital.

The project is structuring an anchor pilot with Fondation Valery, who is providing catalytic capital to catalyze scale within NatureRe's existing restoration project in Colombia's Magdalena Valley by expanding into contiguous high-potential zones.

As the implementation partner, NatureRe executes the expansion on the ground, managing land acquisition, applying its validated restoration methodology, and delivering verified, high-impact carbon removal to validate the financing model for future scale.