“Nature is not the enemy of the economy. It is the economy”

Last week I stood in front of a room of investors, policymakers and scientists - gathered at ZSL’s London Zoo, an institution that has been at the heart of conservation science for 200 years - and said something that would have seemed radical not long ago but now feels simply obvious: biodiversity loss is one of the greatest economic risks of our lifetime.

The room didn't push back. That, in itself, felt significant. 

We were there to ask a question that sounds technical but is actually urgent: what is slowing the flow of private finance into nature recovery? We know the money exists. We know the need exists. And yet the gap between the two remains stubbornly, dangerously wide. 

Here is the scale of what we're facing. Wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% over the last 50 years, and more than one million species are at risk of extinction. To reverse global biodiversity loss by 2030, we need roughly $700 billion a year. Public finance and philanthropic grants - vital as they are - cannot get us there alone. 

Private investment must be part of the solution.

And yet it hasn't been. Not at scale.

For too long, our economic system has treated nature as a limitless resource rather than the foundation it actually is. A tree has only had financial value when cut down. Ecosystems are only respected when they fail. The consequences of this error are now becoming impossible to ignore – be it in the form of flooding, food insecurity, disease spillover, and the collapse of the natural systems that underpin everything from agriculture to insurance to infrastructure. 

As EU Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, Jessika Roswall said at our event: "Protecting or restoring nature is not a cost, it is an investment. It is time to put nature on the balance sheet."  

She's right. But putting nature on the balance sheet requires more than political will. It requires the scientific rigour, clear demand drivers and robust risk mitigation that give institutional investors the confidence to act.

How to overcome the hurdles for investors

When we ask investors what's holding them back, the answer isn't a lack of interest - it is the enabling environment provided by government, academia and civil society. Market failures, incomplete data, regulations in flux and uncertainty about how to measure, quantify and forecast the outcomes of investing in nature recovery continue to hold them back. 

That's why, on the morning of our event, ZSL and partners launched the SPIN (Science for Private Investment in Nature) project, delivered in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Stantec and Imperative Global, and funded by DEFRA. SPIN is a collaboration between academics and investors that aims to identify how to embed robust scientific research in early-stage nature projects in a way that is replicable, cost-effective and genuinely useful to investors. In other words, firming the scientific bedrock on which the market needs to function and delivering the best outcomes for nature and the local communities dependent on the natural resources. 

This isn't abstract. The numbers are striking. If UK pension funds and wealth managers mobilised just 2% of their total assets for nature, it could effectively close the UK’s estimated £50-100 billion nature finance gap. Not over decades. Not through new taxes or international agreements. Through the redirection of capital that already exists, governed by people who increasingly recognise the value of nature to the economy and are willing to put their money into protecting and restoring it. 

The more institutions recognise both the risk of inaction and the investment opportunities, the more momentum can be built to turn the tide for nature recovery.

Collaboration between the science, the practice and organistations

ZSL occupies an unusual position in this conversation. We are a science organisation, with world-leading researchers at our Institute of Zoology. We are a conservation organisation, with field programmes across the world working to restore habitats and recover species. We are also a public-facing organisation, with two conservation zoos in the UK that connect millions of people each year to the natural world and the case for protecting it. We sit at the intersection of the science, the practice, and the public, and we believe that this is where solutions are forged.

The closing words of our event came from Ruth Davis OBE, the UK Government's Special Representative for Nature: "Nature is not the enemy of the economy. It is the economy." 

This framing is important. Because for too long, the conversation about nature has been cast as a tension – between growth and conservation, between jobs and the environment, between what we can afford now and what we might pay for later. That framing is not only wrong, but also actively dangerous. Ecological resilience delivers economic benefits.

Doing the analysis isn’t enough. The next phase of this work is practical implementation. Governments must provide clear and implementable policy signals. Science must underpin credible investment decisions. Capital needs to be allocated to nature protection and restoration. Nature needs to be put on balance sheets. And organisations like ZSL must continue to do what we've done for 200 years: bring people together to connect what we know, and what the evidence shows us, with what the world needs. 

We don't have the luxury of moving slowly on this. The pathway to a nature-positive world is there. The question is whether we have the collective will to walk it together.