Food for Thought: How Impact Investing Can Advance Conservation

Impact investing can play an important role in scaling promising solutions for conservation and food production. That’s why World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched WWF Impact, a new investing arm that makes impact-first investments into early-stage companies that align with our conservation goals of advancing more sustainable food systems.

Food production—fundamental to human survival—poses a paradoxical challenge. While agriculture produces food necessary for continued human existence, it is also a significant threat to the environment and biodiversity, fueling climate change which in turn impacts us. Nonetheless, if done properly, agriculture can also be a tool for fostering resilience in a way that restores ecosystems and nature. Today, the global food system is responsible for 27% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is a leading cause of habitat destruction, including 90% of tropical deforestation, according to WWF’s Living Planet 2024.

To both nourish a growing population while also protecting critical ecosystems and nature, new ways of producing and consuming food are needed. Historically, technology has played a fundamental role in transforming food systems. The Green Revolution is one such example, where new breakthroughs in genetic improvement and crop productivity dramatically boosted yields. Today, a new type of agriculture revolution is needed—one which better stewards and respects the planet and does so in a sustainable way. Technologies and innovative business models can be an important part of this transition, providing promising solutions for shifting society towards a more nature-positive food system and advancing WWF’s conservation mission. However, there is often a lack of funding and resources to enable the growth of these promising business models. That is where impact investing comes in—impact-first financing that deploys capital to generate both positive social and environmental outcomes for people and planet.

In the last decade, impact investing has blossomed in sectors like health, education, climate, and gender. A variety of actors are entering this space, from venture capital funds and multinational development banks to charitable organizations like WWF which use investments to advance their missions. Overall, it is estimated that the size of the impact investing field reached $1.57 trillion USD in 2024, growing with a 21% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2019. Impact investors strongly integrate impact into their operations and have an impact-driven investment thesis, in which they only make investments in companies and sectors that further their impact-strategy. The figure below shows where impact investors fall along the “impact-returns” spectrum. Impact funds make investments that prioritize an “impact return” over economic return. This is where WWF Impact operates. We use patient capital to make investments that are economically sustainable, maximize impact, and further WWF’s conservation objectives and charitable mission.

Food system innovations have the potential to bring about new solutions for addressing climate and biodiversity threats. However, these companies often have a hard time fundraising due to their business models and commercialization timeline. These are often not sufficiently quick for most private investment returns expectations. Global financing flows in general—inclusive of public and private sources—have not been sufficient to support nature-positive solutions to some of the most challenging environmental problems. In 2023, $200 billion USD went to Nature-based Solutions (NbS), which is significantly less than the estimated $7 trillion USD in investment that had negative impacts on nature. The majority of funding (82%) for NbS has come from governments, and there is the need to stimulate and attract more private capital to these solutions. The lack of funding—alongside the lack of mentorship and technical assistance—for these companies with high impact potential makes it difficult for new innovations with the potential for positive social and environmental outcomes to grow and prove their business model.

WWF recognizes the potential that impact investing can have for accelerating shifts in the way we produce, distribute, and consume components of the food system, furthering our mission to save nature. Early-stage companies—while nascent—can transform our food system with their novel innovations, technologies, and systems for operating. It is important that they receive patient, impact-aligned capital that can help them improve, scale, and grow their company and impact. Through WWF Impact, we deploy catalytic capital into early-stage companies working in three spaces: aquaculture, food circularity, and regenerative agriculture. Building on WWF’s scientific and conservation expertise, we have developed investment theses for each of these verticals to ensure we can find, support, and help scale promising companies that can shift us towards a more sustainable food system. By channeling patient early-stage capital into these companies, we hope to draw attention to underfunded yet important-for-conservation sectors and help support promising new solutions that can protect ecosystems, nature, and communities.