The oil spread quickly, a thick, impenetrable sheen staining the water’s surface in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
It was March 1989, and writer Paula DiPerna was witnessing the results of the Exxon Valdez spill, the largest in America’s history at the time.
Over 1,300 miles of coastline, once teeming with life, was suffocating under a slick black blanket. DiPerna watched as it claimed the lives of some 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 22 killer whales, and other marine wildlife.
“We were so unprepared. I saw people using paper towels to wipe off the rocks,” she recently recalled in a tone that showed how unimaginable that still remains.
It was a moment of reckoning — oil versus nature.
Paula DiPerna in 1991 with Jean-Michel Cousteau in Nauru, a small island nation and the site of efforts to conduct deep-sea mining to extract battery metals. (Photo Courtesy of Paula DiPerna)
The sheer destruction reinforced DiPerna’s belief that exploiting finite resources without any stewardship plan was not only unsustainable, but madness.
“The idea that we would be using up valuable resources at a rate where they can never be replenished seems the definition of insanity,” she recalled. “The spill focused me on the reality that in the U.S., we were taking precious oil out of the ground, and then using high-risk transport methods to reach markets, all without any energy efficiency framework.”
As a co-producer and writer at the time with the Cousteau Society, DiPerna wrote the narration for the documentary “Outrage at Valdez,” and her environmental focus deepened.
Now DiPerna finds herself at the heart of a global shift, pushing the world to rethink how it accounts for the economic value of nature.
There’s a cost to everything, she knows. “The climate is shifting and the planet suffering while we try to change.”
In 2023, she published “Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets” — a book she began working on during a 2016 Bellagio Fellowship and which was named to the roster of Best Books: Economic by the Financial Times in summer 2023.
Two of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Latin American Big Bets Climate Fellows also are centered on transformative efforts to alter the globe’s financial calculations and extractive approach to nature.
Nature-Based Accounting
The formal integration of natural capital into national and business accounting systems is a relatively recent development that has gained significant momentum in the past few years. Here is a look at what it means and why we need it:
- Over half of the world’s gross domestic product — approximately $44 trillion — depends on nature’s work, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024. These ecosystem services contribute to food production, clean water provisions, and raw materials.
- But nature has been treated like an “unpaid worker,” as DiPerna puts it. This oversight results in a disregard for protecting resources as well as incomplete economic accounting.
- The solution lies in assigning monetary value to “ecosystem services” — the direct and indirect benefits humans derive from functioning ecosystems. This approach aims to quantify nature’s contributions to the economy.
- Just as commodities like salt and cowrie shells have been valued as currency, natural resources must now be incorporated into modern account systems. Chief financial officers and policymakers alike need to recognize natural assets. For example, valuing pollinating bees as an asset would incentivize corporate investment in their conservation.
- While this shift might lead to short-term price adjustments, it’s crucial for preserving fundamental natural assets and ensuring long-term economic sustainability.
- Given the current state of environmental degradation, rapid adoption of nature-based accounting is essential to prevent further ecosystem collapse and economic instability.
Supporting the Environmental Stewards
Ricardo Politi, who is among the first cohort of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bets Climate Fellowship, is part of the Amazon Investor Coalition, a nonprofit that aims to catalyze sustainable economies for forest conservation and ecosystem regeneration in the Amazon Rainforest. Their mission is to curb nature and biodiversity loss, tackle climate change, and support local livelihoods.
Brazil nuts gathered sustainably from the wild in the Rio Iratapuru Sustainable Development Reserve in Amapa state, Brazil. (Photo Courtesy of Ricardo Politi)
“Deforestation isn’t solely driven by large monoculture farms; smallholder farmers and extractive communities lacking economic alternatives also play a role,” Politi said. “When forest dwellers face economic hardship, they may resort to activities like cattle ranching, or even illegal ones, such as mining or logging.”
Another challenge occurs when forest stewards, especially younger generations, leave for urban areas in search of better opportunities, he noted. Territories are often left vulnerable to land grabbing and other criminal activities.
Within the Amazon Investor Coalition, Politi is working on a blended finance mechanism to channel capital into sustainable wild harvest value chains — such as fruits, nuts, and resins — that supports livelihoods.
“Our financial instrument relies on corporate buyers,” he said, noting the potential for bioingredients in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fashion, and food sectors to generate income for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), helping to address deforestation drivers.
Politi envisions significant benefits for the people and the planet if the coalition’s collaborative financing structure takes root.
“About a quarter of Western pharmaceutical ingredients already come from Amazon plants,” he said. “Imagine discovering and sourcing new bioactives in a decolonized way, with genuine fair trade. This potential is real, but we need to reduce friction and engage large corporations and capital markets, which hasn’t been easy.”
Investing in Nature’s Resilience
Felipe Villela, another Big Bets Climate fellow, is advancing an ambitious plan with The Landbanking Group to put nature on the balance sheet.
The initiative focuses on establishing a new equity class through Nature Asset Purchase Agreements, enabling corporations to invest in the natural capital they depend on — such as carbon, biodiversity, water, and soil health — to build a more resilient, de-risked supply chain.
Felipe Villela explaining his work at The Rockefeller Foundation in October 2024.
The idea is for businesses that depend on nature and therefore are exposed to climate risks to secure a stable supply chain by investing in practices that protect soil, water, and biodiversity, all monitored via geospatial data.
Villela draws inspiration from his mother’s love for nature and his father’s banking career, blending these influences to support land stewards with financial incentives for regenerative practices.
The Landbanking model seeks to redefine wealth within a regenerative, rather than extractive, economy.
“It’s a way for companies to reduce risk and invest in resilience,” he said, “by making natural capital a new asset class.”
More in this Matter of Impact Edition
Reforestation Spurs a New Economic Model
Mombak, a Brazilian startup, restores the Amazon to generate carbon credits, improve biodiversity, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local communities.
Read MoreAffordable Green Energy Lights Up Underserved Haiti Homes
Mesh grids are helping bring solar energy access to underserved communities in a troubled country where many survive on two dollars a day.
Read More