As 2025 comes to a close, the conversation aroundnature and biodiversity feels more grounded than in previous years. Over the past decade, global awareness has increased, data has improved, and corporates have begun acknowledging their dependencies on ecosystems. Yet a central limitation has become clearer: the hardest problem is no longer understanding nature, but how economic and financial systems can be re-aligned to operate within the realities of nature on which human societies depend.
For the Japan Impact Investing Network (J-IIN),this recognition shaped much of our work this year. Rather than expanding the “why nature” narrative, 2025 required focusing on the practical architecture - financial, institutional, and governance-related that determines whether nature-positive commitments can translate into actual investment.
I. Looking Back at pre-2024: Foundations, But Not Flow
As reflected in our 2023 and 2024 blogs, theperiod leading up to 2025 brought important advances.
Nature-related risk became more visible throughESG frameworks and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Monitoring tools - from remote sensing and eDNA to bioacoustics and AI-enabled MRV - improved rapidly. Corporates increasingly recognized that
biodiversity is not peripheral, but tied to supply chains, resilience, and long-term value.
J-IIN’s contribution during those years focusedon early-stage technologies (such as biotechnologies, bioengineering, and biomimicry), tools that could strengthen project design and verification, and
growing interest from VC and seed investors in these areas.
Yet by the end of 2024, a clear gap had emerged:better measurement and stronger awareness were not leading to capital flow. The ecosystem needed something different in 2025.
II. What 2025 Clarified: The Core Constraint IsFinance
Throughout 2025, in Japan and globally, it becameevident that the main barrier to scaling nature-positive action is the financing model itself. We also continued hearing familiar concerns: that
nature takes “too long” to recover, that it is “a debt rather than equity play,” or that “risks remain too high” for private investors. These perspectives are understandable, but they highlight the central issue: without clearer rules, risk-sharing mechanisms, and investable structures, capital will continue to stay on the sidelines.
At the same time, 2025 made clear that annualcapital flows into nature remain far below what is required - not because nature is poorly understood, but because financial systems have yet to align
with the reality that human economies operate within, and depend upon, functioning ecosystems.
Key questions dominated conversations this year:
- Who pays for ecosystem outcomes?
- What incentives or obligations are needed?
- How do corporates and investors share risk?
- What structures allow projects to move from pilots to meaningful scale?
In other words, the constraint is structural, notinformational.
III. J-IIN’s Focus in 2025: Convening theArchitecture Builders
Against this backdrop, J-IIN concentrated onconvening institutions whose work directly shapes nature finance. While our role is not to design markets ourselves, we brought the right actors together
around the right bottlenecks.
In 2025, we hosted discussions with:
- IFC and Convergence on blended finance;
- Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) on market integrity and structure;
- Federated Hermes on investor priorities;
- Government of Victoria (Australia) on compliance market design;
- Oji Holdings, a member of the International Sustainable Forestry Coalition (ISFC) and an active participant in natural capital accounting initiatives;
- Cassinia Environmental and Three Trees (3T) on landscape-scale implementation;
- Wilderlands: Project developer and seller of voluntary biodiversity credit
- Zeroboard and OPIS – Dow Jones on corporate platforms and market infrastructure.
Our webinars increasingly became coordinationplatforms - spaces where finance, project developers, policymakers, and corporates could hear directly from one another. This was essential: no single stakeholder can build nature finance alone.
In 2025, J-IIN also joined the Taskforce onNature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), complementing its engagement with the Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA), as part of its effort to remain closely connected to evolving global frameworks.
IV. The Reality Check: Capital Has Still NotMoved
Despite unprecedented attention to nature in2025, the global finance gap remains roughly US$700 billion per year:
- BetterMRV does not guarantee investment.
- Disclosure does not build markets.
- Commitments do not mobilize capital.
The ecosystem now recognizes that scaling naturefinance will require clear standards, investable structures, long-term revenue models, and credible risk-sharing mechanisms.
V. The Global Context of 2025
International developments underscored thisreality. Outcomes from COP16 (Cali, 2024) continued to guide thinking around biodiversity credits, Target 19 financing, and indigenous governance.
Meanwhile, COP30 (Belém, November 2025) produced a compromise Belém Package emphasizing adaptation finance and progress indicators, but delivered limited movement on fossil fuel phase-out and no major commitments for nature or biodiversity finance.
Regulatory and market signals progressedelsewhere: the EU moved forward with the Nature Restoration Law; Australia deepened its compliance biodiversity markets; and many corporations began testing SBTN-aligned approaches.
Domestically, Japan published its Nature-PositiveEconomy Transition Roadmap in July 2025 - a welcome sign of intent, though still early compared with developments overseas.
Closing
Finally, it is important not to overlook the role of technology and the broader ecosystem that supports finance. When technologies are deployed with a clear and shared purpose - namely, to enable faster, stronger, and more durable ecological recovery, they can enhance transparency, credibility, and coordination across projects and stakeholders. Combined with improvements in the surrounding ecosystem, such as standards, governance, data infrastructure, and risk-sharing mechanisms, this alignment helps reduce uncertainty and makes it easier for finance to engage. Technology alone does not drive restoration, but purpose-aligned use of technology, together with a more supportive ecosystem, can accelerate outcomes and help unlock capital at scale.
J-IIN’s work in 2025 reflected a shift toward theincreasingly practical task of building the conditions for nature finance. The ecosystem no longer needs more awareness; it needs structure, coordination, and credible pathways for investment. As a neutral convener, J-IIN will continue bringing together the institutions that must shape this transition.
Looking ahead to 2026, J-IIN will continue towork with its partners and community to strengthen the ecosystem that connects nature, finance, and technology, and to support practical pathways toward
durable ecological recovery.