--- title: financing nature and the people who depend on it canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/financing-nature-and-the-people-who-depend-on-it markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/financing-nature-and-the-people-who-depend-on-it.md subtitle: a bank lends. this side of the institution funds a place from what moves through it category: nature-finance --- # financing nature and the people who depend on it *a bank lends. this side of the institution funds a place from what moves through it* The Colorado River carried water before anyone kept books. It and the species and people along it exist whether or not anyone opens an account. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is how money can reach them. It is not what they are. **What is financing nature?** Financing nature means getting money to a living place and the people who keep it, steadily enough to pay for care. Here, that money comes from activity around the place: payments by those who depend on it, policies bought on it, and proceeds from coins and certificates. It does not come from loans or deposits. Between 35 and 40 million people rely on the Colorado River for some or all of their city water, and farms depend on about 70 percent of its water. Towns, tribes and power plants draw on the same flow. Many of them pay for it: a water bill, a lease, an assessment. Almost none of that money is addressed to the river itself. :::johnson **finance the place, and the people who depend on it, from what moves through it.** Some of these routes are live today, one is open with no payment counted, and one is only designed. The table below says which is which. [see the policies →](/specific?from=guide) ::: ## financing nature without loans or deposits The Bank of England puts it plainly: most money in a modern economy is created when commercial banks make loans, and banks are not simply intermediaries "lending out deposits that savers place with them." A bank funds by making loans, and the deposits that creates are money it owes back, under a charter. This side of [nature's balance sheet](/guide/natures-balance-sheet?from=guide) works differently. It takes no deposits, makes no loans and pays no interest. It holds no one's balance to lend. Money reaches a place when someone pays it, buys something addressed to it, or trades something that routes a share to it. [What a nature bank could be](/guide/what-a-nature-bank-could-be?from=guide) draws the same line: not a bank. One exception, said exactly. A place's own account may put its own USDC into a short, allowlisted list of lending venues on Base, within limits a person sets ([the account proposes. you confirm.](/guide/the-account-proposes-you-confirm?from=guide)). That is the account's choice with its own money. The institution does not lend account balances. ## where the money comes from, and what is live Four sources can fund a place, and the stage each one is at matters more than the list. | source | who pays | where it lands | status on 14 November 2026 | |---|---|---|---| | Dependents' payments | A utility, a company, a town or a resident that relies on the place | The place's own account, paid directly | Open. An account can be paid in USDC or EURC today. This post counts no payment from a utility, company or town | | Policies | A buyer of a certificate on a named policy | The recipient the certificate names, in the same transaction, less the minting contract's fee | Live. 26 policies | | Coin and certificate proceeds | Anyone who trades a coin named for a place, stock or flow, or buys a certificate that names a split | Usually a split that divides it by fixed shares among accounts, groups and streams | Live route. Receipts not measured here | | Protocol-wide distribution | Aggregate proceeds | Certificate holders across the protocol | Designed. None paid | **Live** means it runs on Base today. **Open** means the rail works and no payment is counted here. **Designed** means it is specified and not built or paid. The first row is the oldest idea on the list. [Who pays for nature](/guide/who-pays-for-nature?from=guide) tells how New York City paid upstream rather than build a filtration plant, and why the river was never the payee. A place's account fills that seat. [The money you trust is already onchain](/guide/the-money-you-trust-is-already-onchain?from=guide) covers the dollars and euros that payment can arrive in. The third row is the proceeds tree: splits, swappers and twelve streams that run from 3 months to 512 years, all public at [/proceeds](/proceeds?from=guide). [Proceeds pay all the time](/guide/proceeds-pay-all-the-time?from=guide) walks it branch by branch, so this post will not. ## fees, and what is still design A small fee on swaps through the app helps fund the protocol's operations while it is built. Routing a share of activity to the accounts of the places involved is part of the design. The amounts are small. On 14 November 2026 at 13:02 UTC, `/api/protocol/stats` reported $4.90 of source-reported trading across the ENSURE token and 196 coins in the previous 24 hours, with 19 coins showing any activity. That is trading on every venue, not only swaps through the app. So "everything that moves through the protocol funds every place" is the design. Today, a coin's proceeds route to its payout recipient, usually a split, and a certificate sale pays the recipient the certificate names. A protocol-wide distribution to holders is designed, and none has been paid. Both statements are true at once. ## what 26 policies are, and are not A **policy** is what a certificate is issued on. On 14 November 2026 the stats endpoint counted 26. A handful name one living thing or place (a wetland forest, the Arno River, a wildlife corridor, elk, a flyway). The rest cover natural-capital classes, industries, groups and parts of the proceeds tree. For the 24 priced in USDC, minted certificates times today's price add up to $36,832. Two more are priced in euros or another token and sit outside that sum. Read that figure carefully. It is minted supply times today's configured price. It is not money received, not a valuation of the place, and not land protected. A dependent pays per policy, in that policy's currency, and the sale price, less the minting contract's fee, goes to the recipient the certificate names in the same transaction ([paid on arrival](/guide/paid-on-arrival?from=guide)). What the money is for depends on the parcel. [Fund the land before the work it pays for](/guide/fund-the-land-before-the-work-it-pays-for?from=guide) separates the capital bill (acquisition, easements, clearing debt) from the care bill that never ends. ## the people who depend on a place pay, and get paid A bank has borrowers on one side and depositors on the other. Here the same people often sit on both sides of one place. A **utility** depends on clean, steady water. It can pay the watershed's account, or, where a policy exists for the place above its intake, buy a certificate on it, and report that payment as a line it can audit. A **corporation** with a supply chain in a growing region can do the same for the soil, the pollinators or the water its suppliers rely on. An **investor** can buy certificates and hold them. None of them should expect a coupon. [The forest does not pay a coupon](/guide/the-forest-does-not-pay-a-coupon?from=guide) explains why. Here there is no quoted yield rate and no promise, though certificates carry distributions by design. The people funded are often the same neighbours. **Stewards** who pull weeds, fix fence and log the flow. **Suppliers**, the rancher or grower whose land holds the water. **Residents** who live with the place every day. A split can name any of them, a group or a crew account, and pay them each time money arrives. A person is paid only by being named. Paying a crew on a schedule is still a decision a person makes. That is the reciprocity. The people who take water, food or calm from a place pay toward it, and some of that money comes back to the people who keep it. ## what this side does not do It does not make money appear. Every dollar in a place's account came from someone who chose to pay or trade. It does not guarantee an amount: a split divides what arrives, and a stream paces it. It does not give a payer any claim on the place, its land or the people who live there. And it does not replace public budgets, grants or ratepayer programs. It runs underneath them, on rules anyone can read. ## where to go next Read the policies at [/specific](/specific?from=guide). If you run water, power or wastewater, see [what we do with utilities](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=natures-balance-sheet). The next post, [who holds the keys to a river's account](/guide/who-holds-the-keys-to-a-rivers-account?from=guide), asks who works the counter. ## frequently asked questions ### what is financing nature? Getting money to a living place and the people who keep it, steadily enough to pay for care. On ensurance it comes from activity: payments by dependents, policies, and proceeds from coins and certificates. It does not come from loans or deposits. ### does the swap fee go to the place? Not directly, today. A small fee on swaps through the app helps fund the protocol's operations while it is built. Routing a share of activity to the accounts of the places involved is part of the design. Today a place is funded by payments to its account, its certificates and its coin proceeds. ### do certificate holders get paid from protocol activity? Not today. A protocol-wide distribution to certificate holders is designed, and none has been paid. Buying a certificate pays the recipient it names. It is not a promise of a return. ### is this a loan? No. Nobody borrows a place's balance from the institution, and the institution takes no deposits. A place's own account may put its own USDC in an allowlisted venue, within limits a person sets. ## sources [US Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado River Basin](https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/) — Between 35 and 40 million people rely on Colorado River water for some or all of their municipal needs; agriculture uses about 70 percent [Bank of England, Money creation in the modern economy (Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1)](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy) — Most money is created by commercial banks making loans; banks are not simply intermediaries lending out deposits [ensurance, protocol stats](https://ensurance.app/api/protocol/stats) — Policies, minted value at current price, streams and 24h volume, read 14 November 2026 at 13:02 UTC [ensurance, proceeds](https://ensurance.app/proceeds) — The public proceeds tree: splits, swappers and streams ## the series 1. [nature's balance sheet](/guide/natures-balance-sheet?from=guide) — **Read first:** Everyone wants to put nature on the balance sheet. A new kind of institution gives nature its own, and does a bank's work on two sides 2. [nature is the customer](/guide/nature-is-the-customer?from=guide) — Millions of rivers, species and places could hold an account. A few thousand do 3. [what a river does with an account](/guide/what-a-river-does-with-an-account?from=guide) — Personhood gives a river standing. An account gives it a ledger. Here is one, read live 4. [financing nature and the people who depend on it](/guide/financing-nature-and-the-people-who-depend-on-it?from=guide) — A bank lends. This side of the institution funds a place from what moves through it 5. [who holds the keys to a river's account](/guide/who-holds-the-keys-to-a-rivers-account?from=guide) — The institution never pools the balance with its own money. Whoever holds an account's token holds the key, and people and AI work under them