For the second World Biodiversity Forum running, biodiversity finance had a dedicated home at the event, building on work led by IFB Theme Leader Professor Franzi Schrodt.
The fourth World Biodiversity Forum (WBF2026), held in Davos from 15–19 June, brought together more than 1,100 participants from over 70 countries under the theme Leading Transformation Together.
This year, biodiversity finance had a much bigger presence.
At the previous Forum, Franzi helped organise one of the event's first sessions dedicated to biodiversity finance. Two years later, that initial session has grown into a full thematic track, Biodiversity, economic risks and finance, comprising 12 sessions and seven workshops.
The expansion reflects the speed at which biodiversity finance is moving from a specialist field towards the mainstream, and the growing appetite for serious cross-disciplinary discussion about how capital can be mobilised for nature.
At the heart of the track was FIN7, Biodiversity Finance and Economics: Metrics, Markets, and Private Capital. Franzi co-organised the session with researchers from ETH Zurich and the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI).
Convened by Thomas Giroux, with co-conveners Chiara Colesanti Senni, Fanny Cartellier, Ram Pandit and Franzi, FIN7 ran throughout 17 June. Both the morning and afternoon sessions were fully attended, while a lunchtime poster session also attracted a strong audience.
The day's discussions moved through three connected areas.
The first explored nature as financial risk and opportunity, looking at the evolution of biodiversity finance and the growing involvement of financial institutions and businesses. Research presented included work on forests as a hedge against firm-level heat risk, the relationship between nature dependence and biotech valuations, and a global survey of capital providers' appetite for blended finance.
Attention then turned to markets, financial instruments and metrics. Speakers examined sustainability-linked bonds, the development of credible biodiversity credit markets, corporate reporting standards, and the challenge of making privately held biodiversity data available for nature finance.
IFB Flagship Leader Richard Field presented work on supporting the development of credible biodiversity credit markets in developing countries, while Franzi spoke about the challenges and opportunities involved in unlocking biodiversity information for nature finance.
The final part of the day took a broader look at governance and the limits of nature markets, including the sustainability of capital flows, the fragmented architecture of nature markets and the role of regulation. A panel discussion moderated by Owen Nevin brought speakers together to explore these issues before the session concluded with a case study examining biodiversity-economics knowledge gaps in Western Australia, one of the world's recognised biodiversity hotspots as well as a major mining economy.
Seven further contributions were presented during the poster session, covering subjects including biodiversity finance in China, the alignment of biodiversity indicators across EU and market frameworks, and variation in England's Biodiversity Net Gain assessments and what this could mean for the integrity of nature credit markets.
The growing prominence of finance at WBF reflects a wider change in the biodiversity debate. WBF2026 Chair Gabriela Schaepman-Strub highlighted the need for greater cooperation with businesses and financial markets as companies increasingly recognise their dependence on nature. Demonstrating the benefits of public and private investment in biodiversity, while reducing the risks associated with biodiversity loss, was a central part of this year's forum.
For IFB, the popularity of FIN7 and the wider finance track is an encouraging sign. The need to bring together science, finance, policy and the third sector is increasingly recognised internationally, and so too is the need for rigorous research to underpin decisions about how capital can support nature.
More information about FIN7, including the full programme and abstracts, is available from the WBF2026 programme.