Finance 4Nature

From December 2-4, 2025, 36 professionals from 13 different countries and 25 organizations came together for our first ever Finance 4Nature course, delivered in partnership with the Conservation Finance Alliance and hosted at Conservation International’s Headquarters just outside of Washington DC. 

As pressure mounts to address critical funding gaps and attract new investments that will sustainably finance conservation efforts around the world, biodiversity finance is one of the most sought topics for conservation capacity development. Capitalizing on this momentum, Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) and the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA) launched this short course to help conservation professionals understand the suite of finance solutions available to increase their conservation impact.

 
Participants embarked on this three-day intensive learning journey with Lead Instructor and CFA Executive Director, David Meyers. Seven guest speakers from The Nature Conservancy, Convergence, The Inter-American Development Bank, Enduring Earth, and more also shared cases of effective and innovative nature finance projects from around the world. This included a presentation from CSF-Brazil’s Executive Director, Julia Queiroz, who shared CSF’s newest research with the World Wildlife Fund on closing finance gaps for forests in Brazil and Indonesia.

Participants Learned: 

• Core nature finance theory and taxonomy, including how to frame conservation finance beyond filling finance gaps
• The current state of finance for nature, including key actors and common funding sources
• The four guidance principles of finance for nature: Optimize resource efficiencies, discourage harmful actions, incentivize positive actions, increase financial capital for conservation
• Seven different classes and categories of nature finance mechanisms
• Practical tools for identifying and prioritizing a portfolio of finance solutions for different landscapes, organizations, and sites
• The tradeoffs among different finance solutions and how to identify the best solutions, given the specific conservation context

“In 3 days [this course] consolidated what I've been trying to understand about the pros and cons of different financial instruments over the last year, and brought them all together as a suite of options. [I] gained more knowledge than I could have hoped for.” - Anonymous Finance 4Nature Course Participant