How Can We, the Nature Tech Community, Deliver More Impact?
Session Description
Nature tech has seen major advances in sensing, AI and monitoring, yet global biodiversity indicators continue to decline, and this session opened by naming that gap directly: the sector may be better at documenting loss than reversing it. Four panellists gave short provocations on where the community should focus, touching on infrastructure financing, data ownership and indigenous knowledge, publishing failures alongside successes, and experimental models for representing ecosystems as economic participants. Attendees then split into small groups to discuss what success for nature tech looks like in 2030, the biggest blockers to getting there, and what coordination mechanisms are missing, before reporting back to the room.
Speakers
Francis Gassert, Strategy & Impact, Vizzuality
Watch the Session Recording
Key Takeaways
Groups converged on a shared 2030 vision: natural capital integrated with financial capital, biodiversity framework targets met, standardised data infrastructure in place, and more empowered local communities, though several participants noted this is a short timeline for outcomes that need to hold much longer.
Restricting nature data behind paywalls was raised as a barrier to impact, with one example showing a restricted-access model earning far less over time than a single open-access grant would provide.
VC-backed "build, grow, sell" funding cycles were flagged as poorly suited to funding shared infrastructure, since public-good tools rarely reach commercial viability before funding runs out.
One group proposed a tiered data access model: open for non-profit use, paid for commercial use to fund the infrastructure's upkeep.
Current measures of success (new apps, dashboards, posts) were criticised more than once for tracking activity rather than outcomes, with a call for more shared data on what actually worked or failed in restoration and conservation projects.
Some participants questioned the session's own 2030 framing, arguing the discussion had defaulted to short-term thinking despite nature outcomes requiring much longer timeframes.
Kaja Wasik's idea of extending economic agency to ecosystems remained an open provocation by the session's end. On the separate question of funding shared infrastructure, one panelist noted a foundation and endowment mechanism for this was already in development as a collaboration between two organisations.
