Financing the living world: towards a regenerative economy and a positive impact finance
The President of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly has asked me to speak in presential in New York at the special conference on Harmony with Nature and Living Well.
- Read here the text of my intervention on this session,
- You will find below a summary of what I was able to talk about during these 3 hours, specifically on the subject of Impact Finance and the refinancing of the living.
Since the early 2000s, I have witnessed – and been a long-distance participant in – successive attempts to reconcile finance with the common good.
At the time, we were still talking about ethical finance: a marginal approach, full of good intentions but rarely translated into actual investment mechanisms. Then came the 2010s, marked by the rise of ESG criteria – Environmental, Social, Governance – which gradually reached the radar of major institutions, though without always changing the core of the financial machine.
Today, in the 2020s, a more radical shift is emerging: that of impact finance, which is demanding, measurable, and transformative.
This emerging movement carries a new ambition: to re-enchant finance not through idealism, but through its concrete capacity to support an economy of regeneration, cooperation, and shared abundance. A form of finance that no longer settles for damage limitation, but that aims to create meaning, life, and value for all.
A finance to be re-founded: moving beyond extraction, avoiding the commodification of life
Contemporary finance is one of the main drivers of ecosystem destruction: by directing capital flows toward extractive, short-term, and disconnected activities from the cycles of life, it fuels a growth model incompatible with Nature.
In this changing landscape, several structuring initiatives play a catalytic role in this new vision of finance. In Geneva, the Building Bridges movement has become an essential meeting point between traditional finance, impact actors, the United Nations, and civil society, offering a unique space to build bridges between still-too-siloed worlds. In this same dynamic, the Annual International Conference on Impact Finance for Peace and Development, organized by the Geneva Forum, has managed to foster a cross-sector dialogue between investors, institutions, project leaders and fragile territories, with a clear focus on sustainable reconstruction and conflict prevention. To amplify these efforts, 40 impact funds have united under the name United for Impact and launched an appeal to recognize impact on a level beyond ESG. Finally, the creation of the Geneva Foundation for the Future embodies the long-term anchoring of this vision through an agile, interdisciplinary instrument capable of supporting the systemic transformation of financing models in service of future generations.
It is therefore imperative to profoundly transform how money circulates and what it is mobilized for. But this transformation can only succeed if we avoid a major trap: the capitalization and commodification of the living world.
Assigning financial value to Nature as a method of protection may produce short-term incentives. But in the long run, it reinforces an anthropocentric approach, where Nature only has value through what it brings us. This amounts to transforming life into exploitable assets, disconnecting it from its own dynamics, which carries real risks of harmful impacts on Nature, while perpetuating mechanisms of domination, speculation, and appropriation.
A bio-inspired approach to organizational management requires not monetizing what belongs to the sacred living world. Such confusion distances finance from its potential to serve life, and fuels the very problems it claims to solve.
Putting money at the service of life
The regeneration of the living world is not a cost; it is a structural investment in the future. This requires a paradigm shift: putting finance back in the service of well-being, of life, and of projects with positive impact.
The tools exist:
Impact finance: investments directed toward ecological, social, and territorial projects that go beyond green finance or responsible finance.
Participatory funds: democratic and local governance of capital allocation.
Local currencies and exchange systems: anchoring economic flows within ecosystems.
Add here Ethical and smart currencies: and define
This shift in purpose creates a reciprocity effect: the more finance serves life, the more it generates lasting abundance and true wealth, including monetary wealth, since the systems are then interwoven and assume an interdependence inherent to the functioning of life.
Nature-based solutions: a lever for convergence
Nature-based solutions demonstrate that restoring ecosystems can simultaneously address climate, social, and economic challenges:
Wetland restoration = flood regulation + biodiversity + local agriculture
Agroforestry = carbon capture + soil fertility + food sovereignty
Coastal rehabilitation = storm protection + sustainable tourism + artisanal and agricultural production
Nature-based solutions are financially attractive: they generate measurable co-benefits, attract green financing while meeting the standards of impact finance, and align with the SDGs.
But again, care must be taken not to turn them into disconnected financial products. Their grounding in local governance, ecological knowledge, and commons is essential.
Concrete tools for regenerative finance
To root finance in the dynamics of the living world, several levers can be activated:
Integral accounting: incorporating natural, social, and cultural capital into balance sheets.
Payments for ecosystem services (PES): recognizing the value of ecological functions (pollination, water filtration, carbon storage).
Ethical and cooperative banks: responsible credit and investment models.
Regenerative green bonds: funding projects that actively restore ecosystems.
Toward financial harmony with Nature
This is not about "greening" existing finance, but about changing the matrix. In an economy in harmony with Nature, money is no longer an end but a means of supporting living cycles.
A bio-inspired company will direct its flows toward regenerating its territories. A local authority will fund green infrastructure and ecological employment. A responsible investor will value ecological and human indicators as much as monetary returns, which will not decrease—quite the opposite. Truly ecological and resilient projects naturally generate more revenue than “greenwashed” projects, which are bound to malfunction.
True wealth then becomes shared abundance, rooted in longevity, vitality, and interdependence. Such finance, aligned with the principles of life, generates more life, and therefore more value—in addition to generating higher financial returns in the strictest sense.
Mr. Thomas EGLI’s Interventions on April 22, 2025 in New York
Link to UN Web TV, April 22 session (you can watch in French or English by adjusting the audio)
Indicative Bibliography
Kate Raworth (2017), Doughnut Economics
UNEP (2021, 2022, 2023…), State of Finance for Nature and Aligning Finance for the Planet
Commonland Foundation (2022), 4 Returns Framework
Thomas Egli (2023), Work on Bio-inspired systemic governance and Deep-impact finance
CIFOR-ICRAF (2022), Annual report on Nature-based Solutions and Climate Finance