Former Gartner vice president of research Peter Sondergaard once said, “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.”[1] Sebastian Leape would likely agree with the sentiment, though he might wince at the fossil fuel comparison; Sebastian is the CEO of Natcap, which aims to accelerate the nature-positive transition by integrating nature intelligence into business decisions.
Sebastian believes that, to date, insufficient attention has been paid to understanding and mitigating nature-related risks, which can leave companies exposed. Furthermore, access to appropriate data can enable businesses to capture nature-related opportunities. Investors seem to agree: Natcap closed an oversubscribed $10 million funding round in July 2024, making it one of the first nature intelligence companies globally to complete Series A financing.
I talked to Sebastian about Natcap’s mission, the state of the nature and climate regulatory agenda—including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)—and the issues that keep him awake at night.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Natcap is a nature intelligence company that helps organizations future-proof against nature-related risks, capture nature-related business opportunities, and meet regulatory requirements with confidence.
Natcap’s platform, which is underpinned by years of scientific work about how best to quantify “natural capital,” assists companies with all aspects of nature-positive reporting and action. Companies can do the following:
- locate and prioritize where they interface with nature across both operations and supply chain
- evaluate a range of region- and commodity-specific impact drivers and dependencies on nature
- identify and assess all the relevant risks and opportunities, including those concerning financial exposure
Katie: Tell us a little bit about Natcap and the work you do.
Sebastian: There was a lot of research happening in academia in the 2010s about how to quantify the value of nature and the impact that humans are having, which had led to the idea of “natural capital.” In 2018, Baroness Kathy Willis, a professor at Oxford, brought together a group of brilliant scientists to try and operationalize that concept and bring it to the business world. That initiative became Natcap.
In the first few years of its existence, Natcap was really focused on helping landowners—including asset managers and family offices—set baselines for and enhance natural capital on their land. I joined in 2022 to transform what was a research-first consulting offering into a technology company that could provide access to nature data at a sufficient scale for big companies. Since then, we’ve built up a product team, an engineering team, and a sales and marketing function. We have raised two rounds of funding and worked with several of the largest companies in Europe and Japan to kick-start their nature agenda.
Katie: Congratulations! What drew you to Natcap in the first place?
Sebastian: Big companies have spent 15 years talking about climate—which is important—and building all the enabling infrastructure to support that agenda at the business level. But climate is just one of the planetary boundaries we’re exceeding. We also have a freshwater crisis, a biodiversity crisis, a plastic-pollution crisis, and a whole bunch of other crises that are equally existential. It’s actually not intellectually coherent that we forged ahead so fast on just one of these crises, particularly because climate is really just a subset of nature. The agenda should have been broader from the start.
Climate is just one of the planetary boundaries we’re exceeding. We also have a freshwater crisis, a biodiversity crisis, a plastic-pollution crisis, and a whole bunch of other crises that are equally existential.
And this focus on climate has left businesses exposed. While working for McKinsey Sustainability, I served many big companies that recognized that the nature agenda was coming but didn’t have the expertise or data to do something about it. That’s where Natcap comes in. We have a unique opportunity to accelerate the nature-positive transition by bringing world-class nature intelligence in a low-cost, repeatable, scalable format to companies looking to expand their sustainability agenda and, in doing so, make the world a slightly better place.
Katie: Tell us a bit more about Natcap’s service offering.
Sebastian: The core of what we offer is a platform with advisory support to enable companies to measure, report, and ultimately act on nature risks. Measuring climate is relatively straightforward—there’s one metric, and it’s easy to interpret. Measuring nature is much harder. It is hard to know what to measure, how to measure, and how to interpret it all.
With Natcap, companies can upload information onto their sites and into their supply chain. They then have access to all the relevant metrics they should be measuring to align with the TNFD and the CSRD. And that data will have been interpreted so it is useful for making decisions and can be shared with stakeholders. Our platform automates the technical work of metric selection and data aggregation, offering dynamic access to continuously updated data. This not only reduces costs but also ensures that companies can build a historical record of their nature-related impacts. This record enables comparability over time, which is critical to measure progress against targets.
Alongside that platform, we do advisory work. This is a new agenda, and we find that many companies want to talk to a real human; they aren’t yet looking to just log on to another software platform. We meet companies wherever they are on the journey.
Katie: To make this concrete, can you tell us about a project you’re particularly proud of?
Sebastian: We’ve partnered up with one of the leading financial institutions in Asia: MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings. They are also a global leader in the nature risk movement and advocating for their clients and other businesses to start measuring and managing nature risk. We are working with them to develop the next generation of technology to assess nature risk. While most existing risk assessment solutions are high-level and qualitative, our new solution provides a granular set of risks that are specific to a company’s location and management practices and are quantified. Attaching real dollar values to these risks leads to much better conversations about how to manage them.
Doing that modeling is complicated. We’re really proud of the results and the fact that MS&AD aims to bring this work to all their corporate clients in Asia. That’s a lot of businesses. And what’s always inspiring about working with Japanese companies is the time horizon they operate on. They’re trying to manage risks in a way that will ensure that their clients are successful over the next 10 to 20 years.
Katie: Businesses clearly need to invest some effort up front to measure their nature-related risks, but there are opportunities here, too. Can you talk about those?
Sebastian: Some of the nature-related opportunities are similar to those that apply to other sustainability topics. Reducing resource consumption also reduces cost, for example, so that’s a win–win for the company and the environment. Think about agriculture, for example. Regenerative agriculture—which involves farming in a way that nurtures and restores soil health—could reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizer, which reduces costs more than it may reduce productivity.
And setting industry-leading ambition across aspects of the nature agenda can also be really effective in inspiring your existing workforce and attracting new hires, which can create value through talent acquisition and retention.
The drivers of potential value creation vary by industry, and some are still a work in progress. But we are already seeing companies start to innovate to turn protecting nature into a revenue-generating opportunity. For example, the insurance sector has created new products to help a group of hotels off the coast of Mexico take out a joint insurance policy on their local coral reef, which offers protection to the coastline and is also a source of fish and a draw for tourists. In the case of storm damage, these hotels would get money to pay for repairs to the reef.
Another opportunity is that getting ahead of the nature agenda can reduce risk. Put simply, companies that preempt future regulatory or legal issues will be less likely to be sued or fined. This is particularly relevant given the European Union’s CSRD, but this isn’t just about regulatory risks—there are physical risks as well. Polluting companies may face huge fines, delisting, or barriers to listing in the first place. These risks are real, and they hit companies’ bottom line.
Katie: I know that businesses can find the climate–nature nexus frustrating or confusing. How do you think about that?
Sebastian: Companies will often come to us and say that they have spent 10 years and millions of dollars measuring, reporting on, and acting on climate-related metrics. They generally have zero appetite to start all that again for nature, which is understandable. The first thing I always say is that the two issues are interrelated: there is no net zero without a nature-positive future. And some of the best and most effective solutions to the climate crisis also help solve the nature crisis. Companies don’t need to start from scratch on an entirely new initiative; we advise them to think of nature and climate holistically and address them together in one overall sustainability report. Building in considerations around nature is really just enhancing and maturing the work they have already done.
We have a unique opportunity to accelerate the nature-positive transition by bringing world-class nature intelligence in a low-cost, repeatable, scalable format to companies looking to expand their sustainability agenda and, in doing so, make the world a slightly better place.
Katie: Yes, I can see that it makes sense to address the two together, but the global institutional architecture doesn’t yet do so. How do you feel about the two upcoming 2024 COPs? What issues in particular are you watching?
Sebastian: My sense is the COP29—the climate COP in Baku—is going to be a bit of a damp squib, so the big sustainability event of the year will instead be the nature COP, which is COP16 in Cali, Colombia. There’s been a lot of progress in the two years since COP15. The TNFD and the CSRD were launched, there’s been a range of target-setting guidance, and we have had 400 early adopters starting to measure nature risk of their own accord.
I’ll be watching out for three things in particular. First, I hope we’ll see a lot of national biodiversity plans being launched at the COP, including some sector-specific pathways, ideally. Companies need more clarity from governments on what to do to align with the high-level biodiversity targets set out in Montreal. Second, it would be great to have mandatory disclosure requirements, which really exist only in Europe at the moment. Finally, I hope we’ll see reform to a number of environmentally damaging subsidies. Subsidies for oil and gas, as well as for some of the most harmful pesticides, make it hard for businesses to align their practices with nature-positive goals.
Katie: You’ve already touched on the TNFD, but what would you say have been some of the early successes and challenges?
Sebastian: So far, the TNFD is a story in three parts. In Japan, it’s taken off organically. The most influential companies and influences are on board, and we’re seeing high volumes of high-quality published reports. Then there’s Europe, where companies are engaging with the TNFD but prioritizing the CSRD, which is taking up most of their bandwidth. Finally, there’s the rest of the world, where engagement is really sporadic outside of a few countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore.
The key challenges related to the TNFD have evolved over time. A year ago, you would have said that the main challenge was data. Now, however, we’ve had so many TNFD reports published that it’s clear to everyone that there is enough data to measure nature. The debate has now shifted toward intelligence. How do we pick the right data, measure it in a cost-effective way, and extract the right insights to drive business decisions? The gap between raw data and something that can be used in the boardroom is quite wide—and that’s exactly the problem that Natcap exists to solve.
Katie: Sticking with regulation, do the companies you talk to generally feel well prepared for the looming 2025 CSRD reporting deadline?
Sebastian: The short answer is no. Most companies are feeling overwhelmed by the scale and scope of the CSRD. Most companies have been measuring climate risk and emissions for a while, so that piece may be quite straightforward, but they have much less experience with, for example, environmental standards for water pollution and biodiversity.
And within three years, they are going to have to have their submissions audited by a third party. France has already said they’ll bring in punitive penalties for companies that get this wrong, potentially including jail time for board members and fines for the company. So it’s a lot of work and the stakes are high. Plus, sustainability teams are often small and already overstretched.
It’ll be really interesting to see the first set of reports. Some will be really good, and some won’t. Industry standards will then gradually be set as companies look around at their peers. And then, of course, the real key will be to turn reporting and transparency into action. We will need companies to take a look at the data and make real, concrete changes, including changing their practices, suppliers, and strategy. We simply cannot allow it to be the case that, in five years, companies understand the reporting requirements but haven’t done anything about the underlying risks.
Katie: You’ve already started to hint at the answer, but, for our final question, can you tell our readers about the problem that keeps you up at night?
Sebastian: Of course, it’s broadly the nature crisis and biodiversity loss, but land use is among the issues that worry me the most. If our population keeps growing and our consumption patterns keep following the same trend, then there just isn’t going to be enough land left. We rely on those ecosystems to deliver a huge number of critical services, and the solution isn’t clear yet. Should we be using existing land more intensively and trying to set aside land for nature and biodiversity, or should we be figuring out ways for biodiversity, nature, and humans to coexist on any given piece of land? Whether or not we’re able to resolve this could be a truly existential question.
Behind the scenes
This interview is part of LEFF’s Into the Weeds interview series—a series that amplifies individuals whose work contributes to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals at every level. We bring you insights from renowned experts and the leaders of global organizations and innovative local businesses. Katie Parry (she/her) is the director of LEFF Sustainability Group, and Clair Myatt (she/her) is the manager.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of LEFF or have its endorsement.
[1] “Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending to Reach $2.7 Trillion in 2012,” Business Wire, October 17, 2011.