The Amazon COP: why businesses see nature as the new climate imperative
This piece by Eva Zabey and Maria Mendiluce was originally posted in Sustainable Views
Companies see the economic risks of biodiversity loss, but they need to go much further than voluntary pledges
Hosting the COP30 summit in the Amazon is a clear signal that emissions reduction and ecosystem protection must advance together.
Forests regulate the climate, water and soil systems that sustain economies and communities. The integration of these systems into policy is essential to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
While the EU looks to be putting its leadership on nature on hold once again with another proposed delay to the EU Deforestation Regulation, deforestation is one of the top priorities for Brazil’s COP30 presidency. It is also one where climate and nature policies most clearly intersect — we cannot reach net zero without halting and reversing nature loss.
Forests sequester carbon, regulate our climate, act as flood barriers, recharge groundwater, filter air, control erosion, protect biodiversity and more. The World Economic Forum estimates their economic value to be around $150tn. Yet, 6.7mn hectares of tropical forest were lost in 2024.
Businesses are waking up to these risks. Supply chains worth trillions of dollars rely on stable rainfall, fertile soil and predictable seasons. Investors, insurers and banks increasingly recognise that degrading nature means degrading economic resilience.
Yet voluntary corporate pledges have fallen short.
How companies can be credible
Only 3 per cent of major companies with influence over forest-risk commodities are taking adequate action on deforestation in their supply chains. Regulation and finance work in tandem. Governments must adopt national policies that address supply and demand drivers of deforestation and reform environmentally harmful subsidies that distort markets and delay investment in sustainable production.
To be credible partners in this shift, companies should align their climate and nature transition plans and strategies with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework, and work alongside government to accelerate innovative finance mechanisms.
COP30 offers a major opportunity for governments, businesses and investors to back initiatives such as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility to support forest-rich countries to conserve tropical forests.
“Governments must adopt national policies that address supply and demand drivers of deforestation and reform environmentally harmful subsidies that distort markets and delay investment in sustainable production”
Meanwhile, the Race to Belém campaign, led by investment platform Silvania in collaboration with a coalition of non-governmental organisations and other partners, aims to unlock private finance to curb deforestation and support Indigenous peoples, traditional and local communities in the Brazilian Amazon. It will provide $1 of upfront capital for every tonne of carbon purchased from high-integrity jurisdictional programmes.
The biodiversity finance gap remains vast — around $700bn a year is needed globally to protect and restore nature. And to a great extent that shortfall reflects fragmentation. Climate finance operates separately from biodiversity and land-use finance, while investors face uncertainty over definitions and metrics.
Coherent, aligned policy is the remedy.
Create investible conditions
Governments can create investible conditions by embedding nature in their next round of nationally determined contributions and aligning them with national biodiversity strategies and action plans.
These integrated frameworks would enable carbon markets and climate funds to channel finance into high-integrity, nature-based solutions, such as forest restoration, peatland rewetting and agroforestry, that deliver measurable benefits for mitigation, adaptation and livelihoods alike.
For this, ensuring at least 20 per cent of nature-based solutions finance is accessible to projects led by Indigenous peoples and local communities will also be essential.
The European Investment Bank and national development banks are already piloting nature-linked lending and sustainability-linked sovereign bonds. Expanding these instruments, while ensuring double materiality in corporate reporting, would make risks visible and nature solutions investible.
Role for asset managers and banks
Financial institutions have a pivotal role to play.
Large asset managers and banks — from Aviva and Schroders to Rabobank — are working on a range of actions, including mapping portfolio exposure to forest-risk commodities and setting deforestation-free targets. Central banks, too, are beginning to respond.
“COP30 offers a major opportunity for governments, businesses and investors to back initiatives such as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility to support forest-rich countries to conserve tropical forests”
The European Central Bank’s 2022 climate stress test across 41 banks found €70bn in potential losses from environmental risk. The results prompted work by the ECB to integrate nature-related factors into collateral frameworks.
Such supervisory action helps translate nature risk into financial stability terms — making it a mainstream concern, not an environmental, social and governance niche.
COP30 is more than another climate summit. It is the Amazon’s moment to anchor nature at the centre of global climate action. For policymakers, that means aligning fiscal incentives, regulation and disclosure to make deforestation-free economies the norm.
For business and finance, it means scaling investment into nature-based solutions that strengthen resilience and prosperity and advocating for coherent national frameworks.
If governments and businesses can get forests right in Belém, it can mean a future where thriving ecosystems underpin thriving economies.