Promoting Nature-Positive Development through Integrating Natural Capital

This project will identify where the most important ecosystem services are located in three different key macro-zones in Chile; inform the design of economic and financing instruments; and develop local communities of practice to increase long-term capacity around natural capital approaches. Key collaborators: The Chile Natural Capital Committee and the Inter-American Development Bank. Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. 

The Challenge

Understanding the critical role nature plays in sustaining human wellbeing and economic prosperity, Chile has elevated natural capital approaches, which value nature’s benefits to people, into the highest levels of government. In 2023, the President of Chile established the Chilean Natural Capital Committee (NCC) to advise on matters related to Chile's natural capital (its natural assets: lands, water, biodiversity) and promote the integration of nature into the country's sustainable development strategy and economic policies. Between 2023 and 2025, the NCC, in collaboration with Stanford University's Natural Capital Project (NatCap) and the Inter-American Development Bank, conducted a pilot project in the Río Bueno River Basin to adapt methodologies for valuing ecosystem services (nature’s benefits to people) to the national reality, and explore their use in public policy instruments. Learn more about this earlier stage of work: bit.ly/3PsChile. Read on to hear about the next phase.

The Solution

To advance the adoption of natural capital approaches throughout the country, over the next three years a new phase of work will expand the integration of natural capital into public planning and decision-making in each of the country's three macro-zones (north, center, and south). The team will identify where ecosystem services are contributing most to local communities and economies in each region, and build this information into local policies that fund nature restoration and nature-positive development. This approach will represent Chile's ecological and socioeconomic diversity and generate learnings that can be transferred to the national level. The project will also coordinate with the NCC’s Public-Private Natural Capital Roundtable, which brings together companies, trade associations, and civil society organizations to provide input on the NCC's work.

In each region, the work will: 

• Generate natural capital information relevant to the region and a specific policy
• Strengthen institutional capacity and collaboration for using this information
• Align with existing sectoral instruments, ensuring coherence with other policies.
• Connect the information with finance mechanisms to fund nature-positive development
• Create practical tools to facilitate implementation of specific regulations and policies 

This project is part of a broader effort across international financial institutions and countries to accelerate and mainstream financing of natural capital-based policies and plans in support of positive outcomes for nature and people, coordinated by the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. It is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Banner photo credit: Luis Dalvan