Dominic Waughray

Financing Nature is one of the most useful podcasts for my work. In particular, Emily McKenzie's episode explain how the Task Force on Nature Related Disclosures works and is leading to more and more useful action by corporations on behalf of nature; and Elizabeth Beall of Finance Earth speaking about the operations of a fisheries improvement fund. The world is increasingly full of examples of blended private-public activity on behalf of nature, much of which has economic returns tied to it. I had the chance to talk about how US government policies have led to one of the largest, profitable nature investment markets in the world - mitigation and wildlife banks. Thousands of sites have been restored and protected. They are run by for profit and nonprofit organizations. They count toward protected lands goals across the country. And they bring more than $4 billion/year of private funds into conservation. Helen Avery Amy Allan Adam Davis https://lnkd.in/e_ngXVEG

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) new report on #CleanCooking in #Africa is out today. Almost 1.5 billion people in Asia and Latin America have gained access to clean cooking since 2010, an achievement that needs to be repeated. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most at risk of being left behind - with a billion people lacking clean cooking today (4 out of 5 households). Our new analysis based on best historical achievements shows that all countries in Africa can achieve universal access by 2040. This has huge implications for the continent’s development, for health, education, employment, and the environment.                                                                                         Key messages to take away: 🔹 Achieving access to clean cooking in Africa costs USD 2 billion on average per year until 2040, less than 0.1% of global energy investment today. 🔹 Reaching universal access in Africa by 2040 would prevent 4.7 million premature deaths, 🔹 It will halve the time households spend gathering fuels and cooking, freeing up time equivalent of working hours of Brazil – a huge economic opportunity 🔹 It will create 460,000 new permanent jobs – as large as the employment in utilities in Africa today 🔹 It would also reduce greenhouse gases by around 550 Mt CO2-eq , saving forest area roughly the size of Ecuador. 🔹 We see continued momentum from the 2024 IEA's Clean Cooking Summit. More than 20% of the USD 2.2 billion committed at the Summit have been disbursed. Over 70% of the African population without access live in countries with recent policy progress. 🔗 Read more in the report: iea.li/CleanCooking 🔗 Tune in for the launch at 11:00 (CET) today: https://lnkd.in/eNZrYSEp For decades, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has been committed to supporting and tracking progress towards universal energy access. This report marks a new phase in our efforts, as the first comprehensive assessment of clean cooking progress in Africa, including new geospatial mapping of infrastructure needs. Thanks to the Executive Director for championship this topic and well done to the whole team for excellent work. #CleanCooking #EnergyAccess #Africa #GIS #Infrastructure #Investment #IEA

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There is No Future Without Culture 🌍 The MONDIACULT 2025 World Conference in Barcelona has concluded with a historic commitment: culture ministers from UNESCO Member States are positioning culture as an independent pillar of sustainable development beyond 2030. Key Commitments: 📌 Cultural Rights – Protecting indigenous cultures, linguistic diversity, and advancing heritage restitution 📌 Culture for Peace – Using cultural dialogue for conflict prevention and reconciliation 📌 Climate Action – Integrating cultural perspectives and traditional knowledge into climate solutions 📌 Digital & AI – Ensuring human-centric AI development that respects cultural diversity and creators’ rights 📌 Cultural Economy – Supporting decent work, fair remuneration, and social protection for artists and cultural workers Culture is both a driver and enabler of sustainable development - interconnecting education, economic growth, peacebuilding, and climate action. The Barcelona commitment is clear: culture must be integral to the post-2030 UN development framework❗️ #MONDIACULT2025 #CulturalPolicy #SustainableDevelopment #UNESCO #CulturalHeritage

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Financing nature conservation is underserved, even within overall global philanthropy. Overall private financing for nature might haveh grown over 10x in four years to $102 billion, but #philanthropy has fallen both as a share of total and in absolute numbers to <2% of annual financing flows for #nature. According to the instructive new report by CREO, there is a need to consider how to gain greater impact leverage per dollar of philanthropic giving. The good news is that #nature and #biodiversity are growing themes of interest to the private sector. This creates a unique opportunity for philanthropists and market-rate investors to achieve greater scale and impact than they could achieve on their own. In this context, catalytic capital functions as both a bridge and a blueprint: absorbing early-stage risks, underwriting foundational costs of landscape projects, and enabling the design of financial structures that can crowd in follow-on funding when scale is required. As argued in the report below, catalytic capital is most effective as an unlock in this context when it is deployed strategically, designed with intended landscape outcomes up front and sequenced with the full investment lifecycle in mind. In sum, the paper seeks to demystify existing and emerging catalytic capital structures and present a framework for how such approaches could nest up to landscape-scale: top-down, bottom-up, or via horizontal integration. The paper also discusses how family-office investors seeking to play such a role can begin by clarifying their identity as catalytic funders— mapping their values, capital pools, and risk-return preferences against the strategic role they wish to play in the ecosystem. The paper also provides several compelling case studies, including blended structures in which Good Energies Foundation is involved. See full report below, or download in the following link: https://lnkd.in/dZFXwavq

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Carbon Markets and Indigenous People's Rights The #ParisAgreement provides for countries to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their #NDCs to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions and to promote sustainable development and environmental integrity. Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes three cooperative approaches for the post-2020 #carbonmarket participating countries. These are market instruments on Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (#ITMOs), the Sustainable Development Mechanism (#SDM) and the #non-market mechanism. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) recognizes the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples, which derive from their political, economic and social structures and from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources. The potential threats to indigenous people’s very existence, combined with various legal and institutional barriers which affect their ability to cope with and adapt to climate change, make climate change an issue of human rights and inequality to indigenous people. Some climate change measures, such as Carbon Markets, may have undesirable direct and indirect consequences for indigenous communities. The increased interest in carbon markets comes with risks. Forest offset schemes are often found on land belonging to indigenous people whose rights have not been secured, putting their well-being at risk as well as threatening the future of carbon markets themselves. Evidence already shows that Indigenous people face violence due to militarization and securitization practices around both the credit-generating project sites and credit-purchasing sites. As carbon markets continue to develop, it is imperative that IPs are included in crediting operations from start to finish. There is a need for a human rights-based approach to all carbon market initiatives with IPs being full partners, leaders and owners and not just stakeholders or beneficiaries or worse, an afterthought. This calls for the adoption of three strategic pathways for more impactful carbon crediting: (1) recognise, respect, and empower Indigenous People’s systems of governance, (2) build safeguard systems that go beyond “no harm’ to “do better” (3) scale up investments in IP engagement & promote direct financing mechanisms. The Article 6.4 mechanism must follow through on its commitment to ensuring free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) at both the credit-generating project sites & credit-purchasing pollution sites. Locally, governments must develop targeted carbon markets policy and a strategic framework with an exclusively #IndigenousPeoples (IPs) focus & that addresses anticipated violations of #FPIC & human rights. ECAS Institute Nicholas Abuya Paul Stephen Opanga

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This month, Australian Institute of Company Directors magazine asked, "Is ESG Dead?" Here's my answer: ESG reduced to gameable metrics creates deadly inaction. Many in the sustainability space have been thinking this for years: ESG reporting has consumed billions in time and resources while exhausting our collective appetite for actual systemic change. Companies spend fortunes on compliance, all to do slightly less bad while sustaining the exact economic paradigm driving us toward systems collapse. As Luke Heilbuth writes in his AICD piece, ESG's downfall was partially self-inflicted. Ratings agencies turned scores into games. Advisers helped clients greenwash. Sustainability teams promised win-wins while ignoring real trade-offs. Coreo is lucky to work with clients who know we don’t need better ESG. We need an economic paradigm shift. The #circulareconomy won’t just survive disruption, it’ll grow stronger from it. The real question: What measurements will actually matter in 50 years? We need metrics that serve regeneration, not just reputation.

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Climate red-herrings The recent publication of a new article by JB Fressoz (who pushes the narrative that energy transitions have never happened, and uses that to push the idea they never will) has re-opened the debate in France about climate solutions. The article is entitled: "In tech we trust: A history of technophilia in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) climate mitigation expertise" (https://lnkd.in/eptQ5Czv) Two of the main technologies mentioned as signs of the techno-solutionism of IPCC are Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). Let's first start by a reminder that they are different in their nature: CCS captures CO2 at the point of emission while CDR removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Let's also look at what the IPCC really says about both. CCS accounts for less that 10% of the needed emission reductions (https://lnkd.in/eVkNDAXQ) while scenarios reaching net-zero by 2050 have a similar share of carbon removal by 2050. This means that no-one is seriously thinking that you can simply deploy those and not do any emission reduction. Why? For a very very simple reason: for most sectors it is much cheaper to decarbonise (https://lnkd.in/emUPm8Ev) ! And the progress in electrification in different sectors will make that economic argument even stronger going forward (https://lnkd.in/ejTcXU-d) CCS will be needed in some sectors (cement production for example, unless new technologies prove competitive) and CDR will be needed to compensate for residual and non-CO2 emissions. But both will be at much lower rates than current emissions. I am not denying that some might have interest in pushing for those technologies rather than transforming their business- https://lnkd.in/ec_rPCxs but should we inflate their importance? I think the current struggles in both CCS and CDR should be good proofs that they are hard to scale. Source of the graph: https://lnkd.in/ednXuKSk #carbonremoval #climate #climatesolutions

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