Asia's Nature Economy Is Opening. We’ve Started in Tokyo.
- World Climate Foundation
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
On 5 March 2026, the World Climate Foundation convened its first-ever Asia-Pacific engagement in Japan at the University of Tokyo. This marked the start of a long-term World Climate Summit platform in Asia.
Over 40 senior leaders from industrial and financial frontrunners – Siemens, Nippon Life Insurance Co, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust, Dai-ichi Life, and MS&AD Insurance, among others – came together to examine where durable competitive advantage lies.
The answer is nature. And Asia is where that story is moving fastest.
Yet one message came through strongly from the roundtable: Asia remains underrepresented in shaping global nature finance frameworks - despite holding the majority of the world’s natural capital.
The question now is who will shape Asia’s role in the transition economy, and how that platform gets built.
Nature Is Asia’s Largest Untapped Asset
$1 out of every $2 generated in Asia is tied to nature - the water cycles behind high-tech manufacturing, the biodiversity running through agricultural supply chains, the ecosystems underpinning physical assets across the region.
Which means preserving nature isn't just an ESG item. It's core economic infrastructure. But unlocking this opportunity requires more than capital — it requires coordination across finance, policy, science and industry.
That is the gap the Tokyo roundtable began to address.
53%
of Asia-Pacific's economic output (around $18 trillion) depends on functioning ecosystems.
PwC & AIGCC, Nature at a Tipping Point, 2024
"Nature is not just a place to store carbon - it's the foundation of our economy."
– Louis Chang, Chief Sustainability Officer of E.Sun Financial Holdings
The Market is Forming, and it’s Wide Open to Private Investment
Asia is one of the world's most nature-dependent economies. Yet private capital today represents only a small fraction of total nature finance flows.
Participants were clear: the barrier is not ambition, but system readiness — from a lack of investable pipelines to limited data, weak pricing mechanisms, and insufficient coordination across stakeholders.
For investors, that’s the opening. The foundations of a market are already taking shape - through disclosure frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), evolving accounting standards, and advances in satellite data and AI that allow investors to assess nature-related risk and opportunity with far greater precision.
This is exactly why a sustained regional platform is needed — not just to discuss, but to build the market over time.
As the Tokyo discussion made clear, unlocking nature finance at scale requires ongoing coordination across investors, corporates, policymakers and scientists — alongside a pipeline of bankable projects and shared frameworks that allow capital to move.
"Nature receives so little finance because it is not recognised as investable. The full value of nature is not captured in our economic system."
– Professor Naoko Ishii, Director of the Center for Global Commons at the University of Tokyo and former CEO of the Global Environment Facility
Watch Asia-Pacific, the Money Moving
Many of the frameworks shaping nature finance have historically emerged from Europe and North America. But the assets, the economic exposure, and, increasingly, the institutional capital sit in Asia.
What is still missing is a central platform to connect these actors consistently, build trust, and translate ambition into deployable capital.
That shift is beginning to show up in financial innovation across the region.
Asian frontrunners, like E.Sun Financial Holdings, has been pioneering biodiversity-linked loans since 2023, tying financial returns to outcomes like planting over 100,000 native trees in restoration projects.
Japanese giants such as Nippon Life, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust, Dai-ichi Life, and Meiji Yasuda are actively engaging with how nature risk appears on their balance sheets, recognising the direct exposure to Asia's ecosystems and climate vulnerabilities.
"If something will inevitably become mainstream within three years, why not start now? If you start earlier, you have the opportunity to become a leader and create your own distinctive approach."
— Sophia Cheng, Cathay Financial Holdings / AIGCC
WCF: Where Capital Connects Projects
We are building the platform that connects the parts of the market that need each other.
Through the Nature Investment Coalition, we are linking institutional investors, project developers, and scientific partners to build a pipeline of bankable nature projects.
For institutions assessing the transition economy from a competitiveness perspective, the signal from Tokyo was clear - those helping shape this market early will operate under very different conditions from those entering later.
Tokyo marked the first step in anchoring this work in Asia, with the ambition to establish a long-term World Climate Summit presence in the region. This platform brings together capital, projects, policy and science - not once a year, but as an ongoing system to scale nature finance.
Our next stop is the London Climate Action Week for our World Climate Investment Summit at the London Stock Exchange. Each convening on our year-round roadmap builds toward a global network of platforms – with Asia as a central pillar – translating what started in Tokyo into capital that scales.
Be part of building the platform shaping Asia’s transition economy.
On the Horizon
The Global Nature Positive Summit: Kumamoto, Japan | 4–16 July 2026
The summit will convene leaders from government, finan ce, business and civil society to accelerate action toward halting and reversing nature loss by 2030.
Organised by the Nature Positive Initiative, the IUCN Japan Committee and ICLEI-Japan, the summit will focus on translating global nature commitments into implementation and investment.
Registration is now open.
