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Nature is often confined to the sidelines at climate summits, and discussions tend to happen within the ‘nature bubble’, so it was great to see biodiversity, ecosystem services and nature-based solutions high on the agenda at London Climate Action Week 2025.
With over half the world’s GDP dependent on it, the recognition of nature’s role in supply chains and investment portfolios is long overdue. This provides a critical opportunity for us as communicators to firmly establish nature as a core economic asset – helping unlock a tipping point for nature-based solutions.
Blakeney kicked the week off in Canary Wharf, and we were proud to support Nature4Climate at The Nature Hub where over 550 people – including major investors, corporate leaders and senior policymakers – came together to discuss how protecting nature isn’t just about avoiding losses, it’s also about unlocking economic opportunities.
This momentum continued throughout the week, with nature-focused events, sessions and workshops taking place across the capital where a few themes kept coming up:
Messages designed to instil fear and panic seldom work, and yet they’ve shaped the conventional climate and nature narrative for aeons. But throughout London Climate Action Week we heard a clear consensus for a more optimistic narrative – one that highlights the huge economic and social benefits that can come from the nature transition (the process of reversing negative impacts to nature…and restoring it).
According to Pollination UK’s Nature Finance Focus report, by 2030, this transition could generate:
Speaking at N4C’s Nature Hub, one panellist highlighted how ESG risk is the biggest department in banks, emphasising that: “We understand the risks but not the opportunities…there’s much more power in steering towards positive action [than just talking about the risks].” Another delegate summed it up perfectly, “We need to tell the boom story, not the doom story.”
Throughout the week some LCAW attendees expressed concerns around this slipping into being “too optimistic”. But the reality is that the catastrophe narrative hasn’t worked. We can communicate opportunities whilst also being realistic and conveying urgency, which for many in the private sector will come through the imperative to build and maintain the resilient supply chains that they need to grow their business. It makes sense to link these business imperatives to nature – this is the narrative that will drive real change.
Insurers are often overlooked as a key mobiliser of climate finance, but this is changing – and rightly so. Not only is insurance crucial to post-disaster recovery, but it is an important proactive tool that can channel nature-based capital into emerging economies by:
But insurance can also hinder sustainable transitions, with smallholder farmers grappling with the cost of insurance premiums, which insurers are raising to reflect rapidly increasing climate-related risks such as floods, forest fires and ever more powerful hurricanes.
This short-termism is precisely what’s wrong with our current approach to the nature and climate crisis. The more money smallholders spend on insurance, the less they’ll have to invest in sustainable farming methods – increasing the chance of crop failures, flooding and other disasters that insurers will have to pay out for.
There’s a clear step-change in the way that climate and nature are spoken about, with greater awareness of how the two are complementary factors and need equal action. But unlike climate, nature has no single unit of measurement, making tracking progress much more complex, with leaders highlighting a lack of proof points as a key barrier to investing in early-stage nature projects. However, from a comms perspective, it’s much more relatable – especially with consumers who can have enormous influence when it comes to business decisions.
Investors, policymakers and project developers all need to see evidence of successful investments into NBS, particularly those that have scaled successfully and can be replicated. Luckily there’s progress being made to incorporate nature into sustainability reporting – including through the creation of the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, and International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) extending its scope to include nature-related issues.
Many leaders also stressed the need to connect language around nature to issues that these audiences understand. For example, executives, project developers and pension funds understand the value of investing in land and infrastructure – we can frame nature through these lenses.
Everyone understands the value of nature in some way or another, and we as communicators have an integral role to play in connecting the dots for different audiences and making nature relate to them and their objectives. This is how we will build on the momentum we’ve seen at LCAW in the run up to COP30 and beyond.
We set up Blakeney’s Impact unit to change the way the world communicates about climate change, helping businesses and organisations capitalise on the green economy, whilst decarbonising some of the world’s most polluting industries.
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