Scaling nature-based solutions with tech: Insights from FAIRR’s Unconference workshop
At the Nature Tech Unconference in March 2025, FAIRR hosted a session exploring how the Planetary Boundaries can serve as a compass to scale nature-based solutions (NbS) in the agri-food sector.
Led by Sajeev Mohankumar and Patrick O’Malley, the session brought together investors, researchers, and nature tech practitioners to tackle two key questions:
Which NbS should we prioritize?
How can technology help scale them?
Introducing the FAIRR Initiative
The FAIRR Initiative is a global investor network, founded by Jeremy Coller, with a membership representing $80 trillion in assets under management. FAIRR works with institutional investors to define the material risks and opportunities linked to intensive animal agriculture and provides investor members with the research, tools and engagements necessary to integrate this information into their asset stewardship and investment decisions. This includes the Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index, the world’s only comprehensive assessment of the largest global animal protein companies.
Visit www.fairr.org.
What is the Planetary Boundaries Framework?
The Planetary Boundaries Framework, developed by scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, serves as a useful tool for tracking and communicating the impact of human activities on the stability and resilience of the planet.
There are nine boundaries in total, with one dedicated boundary covering climate change, and others addressing various geophysical and nature-related impacts such as biosphere integrity, land and water use, pollution, and the introduction of novel entities.
How the Planetary Boundaries Framework helps align nature and climate goals
While climate change has often dominated environmental discussions, it’s only part of the picture. Nature, through ecosystem services like pollination, water regulation, and soil health, is equally critical to food production and planetary health. A more integrated perspective that considers both climate and nature is essential for identifying truly sustainable interventions.
The planetary boundaries framework offers that perspective. By combining climate and nature into a single system, it helps identify interventions that deliver multiple environmental benefits while minimizing trade-offs, as FAIRR’s report, Climate and Nature-based Interventions in Livestock, explores.
Inside the workshop
This interactive session brought together participants to prioritize nature-based solutions, explore enabling technologies, and identify barriers and opportunities to scale impact.
Task 1: Evaluating on-farm nature-based interventions
The participants were given 12 nature-based interventions that could be implemented on farms and were asked to categorize them based on the feasibility vs. impact matrix below:
High-feasibility solutions
A few promising solutions emerged, options that could deliver impact while requiring minimal behavioral change from farmers, making them more scalable in real-world agricultural systems:
Cover crops: Sequester soil carbon, reduce nitrous oxide emissions during peak winter months, and improve soil health with minimal disruption to existing farming practices
Crop rotations: Improve soil fertility and reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals.
Hedgerows and tree intercropping: Culturally and visually accepted in farming landscapes, while delivering biodiversity and carbon benefits.
Low-feasibility solutions
On the other hand, some interventions were categorized as having low feasibility and low impact due to their complexity, unproven outcomes, and logistical demands:
Enhanced rock weathering: Promising as carbon removal tool, but presents major practical hurdles, from sourcing and transporting suitable rocks, to uncertainties about actual climate impact.
Biochar: Biomass inputs and production and application complexity make sustainability benefits questionable. While offering long-term carbon storage potential, scalability and environmental benefits remain uncertain.
Task 2: Identifying how nature tech can be used to improve impact and feasibility
Participants saw a clear role for how nature-tech could elevate certain NbS into the high-impact, high-feasibility space:
Geospatial mapping tools: Help identify industrial byproducts suitable for enhanced rock weathering, reducing the cost and emissions associated with sourcing materials.
Soil monitoring and remote sensing: Track and monitor emission reduction and carbon more accurately, helping validate climate benefits and improve investor confidence.
Digital decision-support tools for farmers: Guide farmers on how best to rotate crops or manage cover crops to optimize environmental gains, making adoption easier and more impactful.
Satellite imagery and artificial intelligence (AI): Provides a platform to accurately track and monitor emission reductions, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity outcomes, improving credibility and building investor confidence.
Task 3: Identifying barriers to implementation: What’s holding NbS back?
The groups went on to identify several interconnected challenges and offered insights into how technology could resolve these challenges:
Credibility: Stakeholders, especially investors, often doubt the measurability and permanence of NbS outcomes. Without strong data and assurance mechanisms, the risk-return profile of NbS remains too uncertain for many.
No common standards: The lack of consistent methods to measure and report the benefits of NbS creates inefficiencies and makes it hard to compare the performance of interventions across regions and sectors.
Difficult business case for investors: NbS projects tend to offer returns over longer time horizons. The long lead times, combined with inconsistent or unpriced ecosystem services, make it challenging to model a clear ROI.
Regulatory uncertainty: In many regions, regulations concerning land use, biodiversity protection, and emissions reduction are either non-binding, delayed, or inconsistently enforced, reducing clarity for project developers and funders.
Ambiguity in valuing ecosystem services: Ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, soil health, and other biodiversity outcomes remain overlooked and undervalued in economic models, making it difficult to communicate their worth or structure effective incentive mechanisms
Fragmented markets and small project scale: NbS projects are often too local and small to attract institutional investors since they can’t meet their required thresholds.
Capacity and knowledge gaps: In many regions, there is a lack of technical expertise, financing skills, or institutional support to design, implement, and maintain NbS over time. This is compounded by cultural resistance and a lack of awareness of nature-climate interdependencies.
Task 4: Determining how nature tech could help close implementation gaps:
Participants identified several tech-enabled solutions to address the barriers they had previously identified:
Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV): Remote sensing, AI, and environmental DNA (eDNA) technologies can significantly enhance the accuracy and efficiency of MRV processes. These tools help quantify outcomes such as biodiversity gains, carbon sequestration, and water retention, making it easier to demonstrate impact and attract capital.
Standardization through open-source platforms: Nature tech collectives and open-source ecosystems can facilitate shared measurement frameworks, reduce duplication of effort, and improve transparency to help build investor trust at scale.
AI-enabled business model innovation: Machine learning can support more robust scenario modeling and help design business cases that align with longer-term ecological benefits. This could also drive down unit costs through automation and efficiency improvements.
Quantifying ecosystem services: Nature tech can help model the financial impact of ecosystem services disruptions on yield and the wider supply chain, which can support better risk pricing.
Project aggregation and securitization: Digital registries and blockchain-based project tracking can support the bundling of small projects into larger investment vehicles. This would reduce transaction costs, enable portfolio diversification, and improve liquidity for nature-based assets.
Certifications and trust-building: Traceable and credible digital certification can help verify and reduce greenwashing, enabling investors to be more confident in backing NbS projects.
What next? A call to action for nature tech and investment in NbS
As climate and biodiversity risks escalate, the question is no longer “if” we invest in NbS, but “how fast”. Frameworks such as the Planetary Boundaries can help identify holistic solutions that can deliver on both climate and nature.
Nature tech can leverage the adoption of these solutions and offers a clear roadmap for scale that restores ecosystems and supports long-term agri-food system resilience.
Aligning science, technology, and capital is no longer a choice, but a necessity.
Let’s keep the conversation going
We want to hear from you:
Which NbS feel most urgent or promising in your context?
Where do you see the greatest opportunity for technology to accelerate real-world outcomes from NbS?
Have you come across innovative and holistic tools, platforms, or approaches that combine NbS and nature tech?
Share your thoughts in the comments, we’d love to keep building on this dialogue!
