At IPE Real Assets Conference in Rotterdam, the agenda read like a snapshot of a sector at a generational inflection point. We heard about natural capital as an evolving asset class, the challenges and opportunities of transforming our food system, and the potential of sustainable forestry and carbon. By the time I took the stage for my conversation with the amazing Nils Kok, titled Building the Natural Capital Investment Ecosystem, my message was clear: natural capital has finally arrived in the institutional conversation.
As I closed the day, I hope our journey helped bring to life four key themes that featured prominently throughout the day.
First: natural infrastructure is the world’s oldest asset class. Opening the day Eoin McDonaldexplained how long before fibre cables and grid upgrades, the real wealth of nations lay in rivers, forests, soils, and seas. Royalty, churches, and monasteries invested not in derivatives or data centres, but in land. We are not inventing a new category – we are rediscovering the oldest and most reliable foundation of prosperity. And this knowledge underpins our investment philosophy.
Second: resilience lies in diversity, not consolidation. Much was said about scaling natural capital and the potential for a “winner takes all” dynamic. But nature teaches us otherwise. Ecosystems collapse when they become too concentrated. Markets do too. Alongside the rise of institutional players, this sector desperately needs bold startups and innovative disruptors – the new entrants with the courage to break patterns and test ideas. They will ensure natural capital doesn’t just scale, but evolves with creativity and resilience.
Third: premiumisation is already reshaping the market.Look at the tripling of olive oil prices, the doubling of cocoa prices, the restructuring of global hazelnut supply chains. Scarcity shocks trust, and quality drives premiums in every market. Carbon and biodiversity will be no different. The very best credits, grounded in integrity and transparency, will become luxury assets. In time, they will be seen less as offsets and more as vintage investments – rare, valuable, and fiercely sought after. The importance of quality was underlined by the brilliant Paul McMahon, who described their work on regenerative agriculture to improve produce and the ground itself across the globe.
Fourth: data is the connective tissue of natural capital. Asger Strange Olesen spoke brilliantly about the role of data in football – how analytics transformed the way we understand performance. That allowed me to segway perfectly into my own background as a proud data geek. At Oxygen Conservation, proprietary technology underpins everything we do, from land valuation to portfolio management, ensuring we can operate at an investment pace while staying true to our mission.
These are not abstract trends. At Oxygen Conservation, we have spent the past four years building one of the first institutional-scale natural capital portfolios in the world. Valued at around £300m. More than 50,000 acres under restoration. The UK’s largest conservation-linked debt facility secured. Record-breaking carbon credit prices achieved. Discussion around market-changing BNG transactions. And impact measurable in KPIs and inspirational stories – both so important that when I asked the room their views, the audience was divided 50/50 on which was most important.
We hope the audience left knowing that we’re well on the way to proving that conservation can be a high-performance, investable asset class – and that profit and purpose, far from being opposites, are becoming more closely correlated.
Closing the event in Rotterdam was an extraordinary privilege. To bring together the threads of the day – the heritage of natural infrastructure, the disruptive energy of startups, and the premium future of natural capital markets – and to share how Oxygen Conservation is living this reality at institutional scale was an honour.
For me, it wasn’t so much a closing keynote as the opening of a new chapter – the philosophical opening keynote of next year’s event, when Natural Capital will be an order of bigger magnitude and even more important. Natural capital is no longer peripheral. It is centre stage – and the work we do now will determine not only how investors see this asset class, but how future generations inherit the planet.