If you try to invest in "biodiversity," you'll fail. It's hard to buy a bucket of "variability among living organisms." But you can invest in the living infrastructure that produces it.
There is a common skepticism in finance: "You can't invest in biodiversity because what is that? It's just protected areas." This view is half-right and entirely wrong. It's right that biodiversity is an abstract metric. It's wrong that it's uninvestable.
The mistake is trying to invest in isolated flows while ignoring where they come from—and all the other benefits you're leaving on the table.
the power plant, not the electricity
Saying you can't invest in biodiversity is like saying you can't invest in electricity. Buying electricity is not investing in the power plant that generates it.
- The Stock (The Power Plant): The natural asset itself—a wetland, forest, or watershed. This is the infrastructure that generates value.
- The Flow (The Electricity): Ecosystem services—clean water, flood regulation, climate stability, pollination. These are the outputs the asset produces continuously.
- The Integrity (The Efficiency Rating): Biodiversity is the measure of how well the plant is running. High biodiversity means the system is resilient, efficient, and capable of compounding its output.
You don't "invest in megawatts." You invest in the generation capacity that produces them. Same with nature: invest in the natural asset, get exposure to its flows. Biodiversity is the health indicator that tells you whether your investment is performing.
capturing the scarcity premium
Most markets treat ecosystem services as externalities—free inputs priced at zero. But as clean water and climate stability become scarce, they stop being external. They enter the ledger.
The numbers tell the story:
| Reality | Number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Nature-negative finance | $7 trillion/year | UNEP State of Finance for Nature |
| Nature-positive finance | $200 billion/year | Same |
| The ratio | 30:1 harm to help | Same |
| Institutions now disclosing nature risk | 730+ ($22.4T AUM) | TNFD Adopters |
| Natural cap rates (documented) | 131-766% | BASIN RealValue |
For every dollar helping nature, thirty dollars harm it. That's not a funding gap—it's a market mispricing of historic proportions. Ensurance allows you to capture this scarcity premium to fund an abundance response.
- Ensurance Coins: Protocol-wide exposure to the recognition of nature's value. As markets wake up to the 30:1 gap, demand for these instruments grows.
- Ensurance Policies: When a certificate is tied directly to a specific natural asset, it becomes an ensurance policy—a bundled claim to all 19 ecosystem service flows that asset produces.
speculation as stewardship
The more people trade, the more nature gets protected.
Read that again. In traditional finance, speculation extracts value from systems until they collapse. In ensurance, speculation funds the systems it speculates on.
Here's the mechanism:
- Someone buys or sells an ensurance coin
- Trading fees are collected automatically
- Proceeds flow to stewards of natural assets
- Stewards use proceeds to protect and restore ecosystems
- Healthier ecosystems produce more flows
- More flows attract more investment
- Repeat
The incentives are inverted. Traditional extraction profits from depletion—the faster you pump, the more you earn. Ensurance profits from enhancement—the healthier the ecosystem, the more flows it produces, the more you earn.
You get the exposure. Nature gets the protection.
No perpetuity created. No extraction required. No depleting the stock to get the yield. The more people trade and speculate on the value of these instruments, the more funding flows to ensure the natural asset remains intact.
the investability problem, solved
So where's the ticker? Where's the yield? Where do you send the wire?
| The Objection | The Reality |
|---|---|
| "No asset class exists" | Natural assets are the asset class—land and ecosystems producing services continuously |
| "No price discovery" | Ensurance coins trade 24/7 with real-time markets on Coinbase, Uniswap, Matcha |
| "No yield" | Certificates and coins generate proceeds from protocol activity |
| "No liquidity" | Onchain instruments trade globally, permissionlessly, around the clock |
| "It's just donation" | It's infrastructure investment with 131-766% natural cap rates |
The mechanism exists. The instruments exist. The markets are live.
Ensurance coins and certificates are trading now on Coinbase, Uniswap, Matcha, Zora, OpenSea, and Rarible—24/7, global, permissionless. The question isn't "can you invest in biodiversity?" It's "why haven't you already?"
See ensurance instruments trading live →
stacking the coverage: ensurance lines
While we bundle the asset into a policy, we stack the funding through ensurance lines (lines of coverage). This allows for both direct and indirect funding mechanisms to work together.
| Layer | Instrument | Terminology | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Natural Asset | The Asset | The physical place being ensured |
| Direct Layer | Specific Certificates | Ensurance Policy | Bundled policy tied to the specific asset |
| Regional Layer | Group Certificates | Ensurance Line | Coverage for bioregions and communities |
| Liquidity Layer | Ensurance Coins | Proceeds Flow | Market activity generating perpetual funding |
why it matters now
The skepticism that "you can't invest in biodiversity" is exactly why we have a 30:1 ratio of harm to help. We've been waiting for a perfect definition of a noun while the critical infrastructure of our economy is failing.
Voluntary carbon markets declined 57% in 2024. Why? Integrity problems. Verification failures. Offsets that didn't offset anything.
Ensurance solves this differently. By moving instruments onchain, we create transparency the market demands. By tying value to natural assets (not abstract offsets), we create real exposure to real flows. By making speculation fund protection, we align incentives that have been misaligned for decades.
We aren't waiting for biodiversity to become investable. We built the instruments that make it investable now.