ABSTRACT
The Nature Conservancy is exploring establishing the first funds in Africa. Beginning in the late 1990s, larger-scale investment in natural capital for water flow regulation in China – and for a broad suite of ecosystem services in Costa Rica – set pioneering examples that are now being adapted elsewhere and scaled up. Mainstreaming natural capital into decisions is a long-term game plan, requiring co-evolving advances in knowledge, social institutions, and culture. The contributions of many people and places are needed to achieve this. Governments, businesses, and individuals must find it easy to inculcate ecosystem services and natural capital into their decisions, and the methods for doing so must be transparent, credible, and predictable. In the mid-1990s, New York City made one of the first and most famous investments in ecosystem service provision in recent history, to secure drinking water for the 10 million people living and working in the city.
