When it comes to climate-related investments, Lion's share was spent on companies working on energy and transportation. Most investors overlook the real lion. So nature-based solutions like biodiversity tend to be shorter in the investment world. In 2022, just $35 billion was invested in nature-based solutions, compared to $1.46 trillion for the rest of the climate finance sector.
To address the shortage, Climate raised $175 million from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and Calstrs.
Just climate is a derivative of Algoa's generational investment management. Until this year, like most other private climate technology investors, they focused on what they called industrial environmental solutions.
The new fund will focus on natural climate solutions that can include everything from agriculture to forestry. Nature-based solutions typically address greenhouse gas sources that fall under changes in agriculture, forestry and land use.
However, nature-based solutions can also eliminate carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. The reforestation project will cultivate new trees on degraded land and sequester the carbon in the wood. For example, Microsoft recently invested in such a startup, Chestnut Carbon.
The new fund aims to restore nature and reverse biodiversity losses and land use emissions. The company cites several examples of possible investments, including biological fertilizers and pesticides, a restoration finance platform, and technologies that validate carbon reduction and biodiversity protection.
Climate's first investment in January led the Series B funding round at Naturemetrics. The company determines the biodiversity of its site by investigating what is known as EDNA or environmental DNA.