Report Sheds Light On 'Conservation' Impact Investing

In the impact investing world, most of the attention has been on the social side. But fact is theres a lot going on in the environmental part of the equation.

Thats why a group of organizations, including The Nature Conservancy Nature Conservancys impact investing division NatureVest and EKO Asset Management Partners, together with JP Morgan Chase Chase, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, decided to study whats happening in the area. The 60 or so players who responded to their survey reported $23.4 billion was invested from 2009 to 2013.

Even practitioners dont have an overview of the field or the different ways other people are going about it, says Ricardo Bayon of EKO Asset Management.

The findings: Theres a significant amount of money out there for these investments, but not enough places to deploy it. (I recently wrote about a report that found impact investors cite a a lack of appropriate social enterprises to fund).

Called Investing in Conservation, the report focuses not so much on solar energy and other forms of clean tech, but, as the title suggests, on what the authors calls conservation impact investing. We wanted to fill in the gaps, says Bayon.

To that end, the report surveyed about 1,300 transactions from 2004 to 2013 in three areas: sustainable food and fiber, habitat conservation and water quality and quantity. (It defines conservation investments as those intended to return principal or generate profit while also driving a positive impact on natural resources and ecosystemsspecifically, decreased pressure on a critical ecological resource and/or the preservation or enhancement of critical habitat).

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Report Sheds Light On 'Conservation' Impact Investing