Financing Nature at Scale: Rethinking Climate, Development and Forest Conservation with Maria Netto

At the World Climate Investment Summit during London Climate Action Week 2025, Maria Netto, Executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), speaks with the World Climate Foundation about the fundamental links between nature, climate, and economic development. The discussion highlights a new generation of financial mechanisms designed to unlock large-scale investment for nature, while still ensuring that local communities and indigenous peoples are at the centre of these solutions.

Netto talks about one key initiative, Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an innovative fund designed to attract private and public investors and reinvest revenues into forest conservation through environmental payment services.

A central focus of the conversation is the Nature Investment Lab, which works to derisk and scale nature-based solutions, by incubating pilot projects with the potential for replication.

Netto also introduces RAISE (Restoration of Americas’ Infrastructure for Sustainable Economy), a global initiative led by Brazil and supported by international partners such as FAO. RAISE reframes restoration not only as a climate solution, but as a driver of biodiversity, food security and economic resilience.

“Nature, climate, and development are not separate agendas – they are completely linked and they must be financed together.” 

Recorded at the World Climate Summit & the Investment COP 2025, this conversation highlights how rethinking finance, and placing nature and people at its core, can unlock scalable, long-term solutions for forests, food systems, and the global economy.

Watch the full conversation: 

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Maria Netto Schneider, Executive Director of iCS

Maria NETTO is the Executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Society. She worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as a Principal Specialist in Capital Markets and Financial Institutions, and at the New Development Bank (NDB) as Head of the Division of Financial Institutions and Markets. 

In both organizations, she was responsible for supervising programs of Innovative Financing Strategies with local financial institutions and capital markets to promote the financial inclusion and investments of the private sector in low carbon projects and resilience in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, including in sectors of land use, low carbon agriculture, renewable energy and energy efficiency, resilient and sustainable infrastructure and urban mobility, among others. 

Maria Netto also worked previously at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where she was responsible for supervising global projects to support the capacity building of countries and civil society to assess investments and financial flows and policy options to integrate green business in different sectors and economic activities. 

Finally, Maria Netto worked for more than 10 years at the secretariat of the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where, among others, she was responsible for leading the work of the institution in bilateral and multilateral financial cooperation, for the evaluation and monitoring of investments and financial flows to address climate change and the development of carbon market mechanisms under the Kyoto protocol. 

She has a master’s degree in economics from the Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.