Introducing the Nature Tech Directory
Why a Nature Tech Directory?
As nature tech solutions multiply, taking meaningful action for nature is becoming both more accessible and more complicated. For large corporations assessing supply chain risks and dependencies, this paradox is especially sharp: organizations new to the space face a crowded market with few tools for meaningful comparison. Platforms like Crunchbase and Dealroom can tell you how much a company has raised and how big it is, but the Nature Tech Directory takes a fundamentally different approach.
The Challenge We Are Solving
The potential of nature tech is immense, but three persistent barriers hold the sector back.
Discovery. More than 1,000 emerging technologies and tools now exist, with no standardized guidance for navigating them. Fragmented data, siloed platforms, and a proliferation of MRV products make it difficult to see the full picture — let alone act on it.
Terminology. Conservationists, companies, and investors often work from different vocabularies and frameworks, making alignment and collaboration harder than it needs to be.
Scaling. Despite growing demand, a $700B annual finance gap for nature persists. Proven approaches often struggle to reach scale, and nature tech innovations face those same barriers when it comes to growth and investment.
Addressing these challenges requires both visibility into the full spectrum of nature tech and shared frameworks that help decision-makers cut through complexity, connecting innovations to real-world needs.
How the Directory Is Structured
The Directory is built around the Nature Tech Taxonomy, a flexible and evolving framework that lets users filter for solutions through several distinct lenses.
The Tech Lens is home to NTC's long-standing 5M categories, an intuitive set of descriptors for the hardware, software, or technical services an organization offers or uses: Measurement, Modeling, Monetization, Market Pressures, and Material Change.
The Geographic Lens draws on the One Earth bioregional framework to describe not only where an organization operates, but the physical characteristics of that environment, its flora, fauna, and ecological context. For commodity actors looking to drive sustainability in their sourcing, this is the natural starting point.
The Transition Lens (by Impact) captures the systemic changes required to shift toward a nature-positive economy — from Regenerative Agriculture and Sustainable Croplands to Biodiversity Bonds and beyond. Some of these transitions have attracted significant financial attention; others remain underfunded. This lens helps surface both.
Planetary Boundaries, as defined by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, mark the ecological limits within which human activity can safely operate. Organizations tagged here are actively engaged in working within those boundaries through their impact.
SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals have guided investment and nature action for business and government since 2016. They're included here to connect practitioners with the solutions most relevant to their mandates.
Maturity and Funding (beta) is an experimental field for exploring funding trends across the sector.
Reporting and Compliance (beta) offers a quick reference for organizations providing framework-specific services, including natural capital assessments and environmental compliance reporting.
How to Use It
The Directory is designed to be approachable with no prior knowledge of the sector required. Its filtering logic is straightforward: selecting a tag populates the homepage with organizations that carry that tag. Applying multiple tags within the same lens uses OR logic, showing organizations with either tag (except the transition/impact category). Applying tags across different lenses uses AND logic narrowing results to organizations that meet all selected criteria.
In practice, this means a question like "what tech-enabled project developers work in Malaysia on mangrove restoration?" becomes answerable in a few clicks: select Project Developer under Material Change, the relevant regional tag from Bioregions, and the Mangrove Restoration transition. The result is a pre-vetted list ready for comparative analysis.
Can't find what you're looking for through tags alone? The central search bar and AI chatbot can help translate your issue into something the Directory can engage with.
The AI bot features and the logic that underpins them were carefully considered and rendered by Nishanth Nattoji of Nattoji Nature Web Solutions whose expertise in the field has facilitated better matchmaking, discovery, and codification of nature-positive solutions. Keep an eye out for further updates to the Directory from this ongoing partnership!
Best Practices by Use Case
The Directory works well for sourcing tech providers, conducting gap analysis, or simply building familiarity with the space but the most effective approach varies by goal.
For sourcing, start with the By Impact category. Whether your focus is regenerative agriculture or regenerative finance, this lens captures all the players involved across every stage of a given transition. From there, apply the Tech lens to narrow by technology type or organizational persona: eDNA, bioacoustics, project development, and so on. Finally, use the Bioregions lens to surface organizations operating near your area of interest. Additional filters like Maturity and Funding can then layer in further context for comparison.
Get Involved
The Nature Tech Directory is a community-built public good. Their value grows with your input and engagement.
Preview the Nature Tech Directory (Prototype)
Contribute: Add your organization, tool, or project to strengthen the ecosystem
Register Interest: Join as a collaborator, or a coalition partner to help shape it.
For any questions or to express interest, reach out to Nature Tech Collective’s Research Lead, Owen Dehmler-Buckley at owen@naturetechcollective.org.
