
Finance
IDB’s Natural Capital Lab is a one-stop shop for the IDB Group to drive innovation in the conservation, landscape, regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, and marine ecosystem finance spaces. It bridges the gap between traditional environmental and financial actors from the public and private sectors to incubate, accelerate, and scale new solutions to pressing problems.
The NCL is a risk-tolerant hub within the IDB Group. Given that the solutions to many natural capital problems are cross-cutting, it pursues an agenda of blended finance projects with all parts of the IDB Group (IDB, IDB Invest, IDB Lab), in addition to its own projects, knowledge, and strategic partnerships.
As a lab for financial innovation, activities include the deployment of funding in the form of grants, loans, equity, risk capital, or guarantees to:
• Test new models in natural capital finance across the public and private sectors
• Accelerate the deployment of new technologies
• Create enabling regulatory frameworks for innovation in natural capital
• Identify entrepreneurs and projects, and support them with risk capital and linkages to innovation ecosystems
• Link projects to existing investors, international funding sources (such as the GEF), and IDB finance for scale
• Test large-scale financing models for conservation
• Experiment with investment based on natural capital valuation/risk
• Work with anchor companies in valuing and leveraging natural capital in their supply chains
The achievement of the SDGs will only happen if the diversity of actors involved in advancing an innovation agenda learn to partner with each other. Government, academia, private sector, entrepreneurs, and civil society cannot solve problems alone. The NCL prioritizes multi-stakeholder partnerships and provides evidence on how inclusive innovation facilitates results.
As a lab for strategic dialogue and partnerships, activities include:
• Detailing the economic case for investment in natural capital sectors
• Partnering with large global initiatives that convene leaders in technology, science, conservation, and business to develop dialogues on natural capital innovation
• Developing a network of ministries of finance and international actors, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, to discuss how natural capital can be a driver of development, not a cost
Inter-American Development Bank