Nature Finance: What is it and how can it help biodiversity?

Protecting and improving biodiversity is not just a job for governments.  The COP15 biodiversity targets rely on the private sector both reducing harm, and funding recovery.  Carbon markets are rapidly maturing, but private investment in nature and biodiversity is still emerging.  This topic is very important to anybody that is interested in the environment, but it is also a world that many of us are not familiar with – a world of banking, loans, and return on investment.  The Alluvium Foundation asked the University of Queensland to investigate some of the barriers to nature finance.  This webinar serves to release that report, but also to gather some leaders in the nature finance space to introduce our environmental community to the realities and potential of nature finance. 

Here is the program:

A/Prof Jacquelyn Humphrey (Uni of Qld, School of Business) What is nature finance?  Introducing the UQ report

Dr Lucas Dixon (Uni of Qld, School of Business) Nature finance: flows, barriers, and opportunities

Dr Sasha Courville (Natural Capital & Climate) Nature finance at work: Recent examples

Simon O’Connor (Bank Australia) The big picture: providing some context for where nature finance fits

Associate Professor Jacquelyn Humphrey is the Head of the Finance Discipline at The University of Queensland’s Business School. She holds a PhD from UQ and is one of Australia’s leading academic experts in sustainable finance and responsible investment, with a research track record spanning more than 20 years. Humphrey has published extensively in academic finance and sustainable business journals as well as in practitioner journals and has written a textbook on sustainable finance. She is also keen to collaborate with industry and the nonprofit sector and has led several consulting projects. She is an impactful teacher, having designed and delivered courses across undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education cohorts. Humphrey champions gender equity in finance, most recently collaborating with Women in Banking and Finance, a nonprofit focussing on increasing female participation in the finance industry.

Dr Lucas Dixon is a researcher at the UQ Business School and teaches business research methods at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He holds a PhD in social and consumer psychology from UQ (2023). His research explores how individual and collective beliefs affect financial decision making and risky investment behaviour. He also conducts systematic reviews and meta-analyses on donor behaviour in the non-profit and charity sectors. He has published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Journal of Consumer Affairs and regularly presents on these topics. His experience in investor behaviour and evidence synthesis contributed to the development of the “Barriers to Financing Nature Repair” report alongside Associate Professor Jacquelyn Humphrey and the Alluvium Foundation.

Dr. Sasha Courville is a Principal consultant with Natural Capital and Climate, part of the Alluvium Group.  She was Chief Impact Officer at Bank Australia, and Executive, Social Impact at NAB, driving natural capital and climate action strategies in the financial sector. With a PhD from the Australian National University, she has over 20 years of experience in leveraging markets to enable sustainability outcomes across value chains, including as Executive Director at the ISEAL Alliance, as an ACIAR Commissioner, and as current Chair of the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, Dr. Courville has a strong track record in driving nature finance innovations, building leadership capability and fostering multi-stakeholder  partnerships to deliver measurable environmental and social outcomes.

Simon is an economist and sustainability expert with over two decades working across finance, investment and the not-for-profit sector. Simon was previously the CEO of the Responsible Investment Association Australasia for 11 years. Simon has recently been appointed non-executive director at Bank Australia, Australia’s fourth largest mutual bank, is a member of the Federal Minister for Environment’s Nature Finance Council and is a non-executive director of Altiorem, a global public library and resource hub for sustainable finance. Simon currently holds honorary roles at the University of Melbourne as an Executive-in-Residence at Melbourne Climate Futures and Honorary Fellow at the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute. 

Simon was previously the architect and inaugural co-chair of the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute, and until 2023 held the role of Chair of the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, a grouping of the world’s largest regional and national sustainable investment organisations.