The Value of On the Ground Data in Today's Modelled World
Session Description
NatureMetrics opened by framing the session against growing capital interest in nature, whether through infrastructure that de-risks assets or through nature bonds and impact funds, and posed a central question to the room: what counts as "good enough" nature data to give investors, corporates and insurers confidence to allocate capital. Attendees split into groups, each assigned a role (ecologist, tech provider or investor), to define non-negotiable criteria for nature data from that perspective, before debating table-level agreement and reading back an early draft toward a shared code of conduct for ground-truth data in nature finance.
Speakers
Helena Sherman, Senior Marketing Manager, NatureMetrics
George Muscatt, Product Ecologist, NatureMetrics
Caitlin Brown, Head of Strategic Innovation, NatureMetrics
Watch the Session Recording
Key Takeaways
The central question posed to the room was what counts as "good enough" nature data to give financial markets, corporates, investors and insurers confidence to allocate capital toward nature outcomes.
NatureMetrics framed the session against a backdrop of capital increasingly lining up to invest in nature, whether through financing nature as infrastructure that de-risks assets (free water, pollinator services, stable soils) or through nature bonds and impact funds targeting nature outcomes directly.
Caitlin Brown noted a gap between data quality and market uptake, acknowledging that even data NatureMetrics considers strong has not consistently translated into wider market acceptance.
NatureMetrics framed the goal as calibrating a data quality floor that is ambitious enough to be credible but pragmatic enough to be operable, citing the UK's Biodiversity Net Gain standard as an example of a threshold that has, in practice, been more accessible to larger landowners than to farmers or smaller landholders.
Attendees were assigned roles (ecologist, tech provider, investor), each with a distinct brief: ecologists to define minimum scientific rigour, tech providers to define the art of the possible for scaling data collection over space and time, and investors to define what's good enough to underwrite a check, covenant or exit decision.
Hints given to the ecologist role included measuring species, condition and function, and controlling for seasonality, instrument calibration and auditable raw data at an appropriate scale.
One table's readback of its non-negotiables included auditable data for accuracy (from an investor standpoint) and technology built with ecologists' actual needs in mind (from an ecologist standpoint).
The session's stated aim is to synthesise the table-level outputs into a draft code of conduct for ground-truth data in nature finance, to be shared with attendees after the event.
