A statue at the Temple of the Four Winds on the Castle Howard estate in Yorkshire, UK, looks out on farmland that will be restored to promote biodiversity.
Photographer: Mary Turner/BloombergKing Charles and Big Banks Jump Into New Market to Save Nature
As financiers and diplomats gather for the UN’s biodiversity summit, British landowners are exploring the promise — and risk — of nascent markets for conservation.
Last year Britain’s King Charles III warned delegates to the COP28 climate summit that “nature’s unique economy” was in grave danger, and unless humans acted to restore it, “our own economy and survivability will be imperiled.” Now the monarch is taking part in a multi-million-dollar financial experiment to harmonize man’s relationship with the natural world, and using some of his vast landholdings as a laboratory.
The king signed over part of his Sandringham Estate to a private company that will restore its wetlands, meadows and ancient forest over the next 30 years. The company will estimate the improvement to the biodiversity and health of the land, and package that into a tradable biodiversity credit.