--- title: who pays for natural climate solutions canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-pays-for-natural-climate-solutions markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-pays-for-natural-climate-solutions.md subtitle: "utilities, public budgets, and carbon buyers already pay for pieces. the pathway is still mostly unfunded as a hold" category: nature-finance --- # who pays for natural climate solutions *utilities, public budgets, and carbon buyers already pay for pieces. the pathway is still mostly unfunded as a hold* Who pays for natural climate solutions? Usually, the first payers are already nearby. They are the public agency that needs a watershed to keep working. The company whose office, factory, data center, or campus depends on water, cooling, flood protection, soil, or access. The carbon buyer that pays for a measured climate claim and receives a receipt. Those are three different bills. They often touch the same forest, wetland, grassland, coast, or working land. They do not pay for the same thing. Public watershed and land budgets pay for service continuity. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection already protects the Catskill and Delaware forests because the city drinks that unfiltered supply. Corporate dependency programs pay for continuity inside an operating system. Salesforce’s downtown San Francisco campus depends on Hetch Hetchy water from the Tuolumne, a forested Sierra supply. The corporations door for that kind of dependency is [ecosystem service accounting and funding the forests a business depends on](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=natural-climate-solutions). Carbon-credit buyers are the cousin. They pay for a receipt tied to a carbon claim. That receipt can be useful. It is still partial, as covered in [the tonne is real and partial](/guide/the-carbon-tonne-is-not-the-climate). The pathway’s other work is still unpaid. :::johnson **the people who already depend on the pathway are already paying for the failure.** the hold is a different bill: keeping the forest, wetland, grassland, coast, or working land in the condition that lets the pathway keep working. ::: ## the payer map The cleanest map starts with dependency, not virtue. A watershed agency pays because source water quality changes the cost and risk of treatment. A city budget is not buying a forest’s worth. It is funding a condition it relies on. A company pays because its operations sit inside a biophysical system. Water, heat, access, fire risk, flood risk, and license to operate are not abstractions. A campus that drinks from a forested supply already has a dependency. The accounting may be indirect, but the dependency is not. A carbon buyer pays because a protocol translates one part of a pathway into a claim. That claim can move money. It also narrows the frame. Water filtration, flood buffering, soil health, biodiversity habitat, and enhanced climate resilience are co-benefits named in the natural climate solutions literature. They are not inside the tonne. This is why the buyer of a tonne is not always the right buyer for the hold. ## what the science gives us Griscom et al. organized natural climate solutions as 20 conservation, restoration, and improved land management pathways across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. The main text names pathways such as Avoided Forest Conversion, Reforestation, Natural Forest Management, Improved Plantations, Avoided Woodfuel Harvest, Fire Management, Biochar, Conservation Agriculture, Cropland Nutrient Management, Trees in Croplands, the four grazing pathways, Coastal Wetland Restoration, and Avoided Coastal Wetland Impacts. The paper’s twenty are completed in the supplement. The maximum potential is 23.8 PgCO2e per year, with a 95% confidence interval of 20.3–37.4, at a 2030 reference year. That maximum is constrained by food security, fiber security, and biodiversity conservation. It is not constrained by cost. About half of that maximum, 11.3 PgCO2e per year, is cost-effective if the social cost of CO2 is at least $100 per MgCO2e by 2030. Natural climate solutions can provide 37% of the cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed through 2030 for a greater than 66% chance of holding warming below 2°C. One-third of that cost-effective slice can be delivered at or below $10 per MgCO2. Those figures explain why carbon buyers show up. They also explain why carbon alone cannot carry the full bill. A price can bridge action. It is not the worth of a living system. For the base definition, see [what natural climate solutions actually are](/guide/what-natural-climate-solutions-actually-are). ## does versus should | buyer | does | should | |---|---|---| | New York City Department of Environmental Protection | Funds protection of the Catskill and Delaware watershed forests because the city drinks that unfiltered supply. | Fund the pathway’s condition as a hold, not only the avoided treatment burden or the gallon that arrives downstream. | | Salesforce’s downtown San Francisco campus | Pays for water service used by a campus that depends on Hetch Hetchy water from the Tuolumne, a forested Sierra supply. | Fund the condition of the source pathway as a hold, not only the utility bill at the point of use. | The offer itself, including the unit, service, and door, lives in [how natural climate solutions get funded](/guide/how-natural-climate-solutions-get-funded). ## why the hold is a different bill A gallon is a delivery measure. A tonne is a climate accounting measure. Neither one is the forest, wetland, grassland, coast, or working land. The hold is the funded condition that keeps the pathway capable of doing its work. It asks a different question: who benefits if this system keeps functioning, and who is already paying when it does not? That can point to a public agency. It can point to a company. It can point to insurers, utilities, port authorities, food buyers, land managers, and infrastructure owners. This post is the map, not the pitch. The next post covers the funding door. The distinction matters because recent nature-investment writing often treats natural climate solutions largely as carbon-credit and reforestation deals. Those deals are part of the market. They are not the whole map. Project Drawdown, The Nature Conservancy, and carbon protocols have helped make the climate value visible. The practical finance question is narrower and more direct: which payer is close enough to the pathway to fund it before failure becomes a larger invoice? ## public payers Public payers already have authority over land, water, fire, flood, parks, coasts, agricultural support, and procurement. Their budgets often sit where natural climate solutions show up first. A public watershed budget is the simplest example. The agency does not need to love the word nature. It needs reliable water. The forest is not a brand asset. It is part of the supply system. For governments, the move is not to turn every forest into a carbon product. It is to identify which pathway already reduces public risk, then fund the condition that keeps that pathway working. Public teams can start with [solutions for governments](/solutions/governments?from=guide&topic=natural-climate-solutions) or [contact ensurance](/contact?from=guide&topic=natural-climate-solutions). ## corporate payers Corporate payers usually start from exposure. Water reliability. Heat. Flood interruption. Fire disruption. Supply risk. Site access. Community trust. A company with a downtown campus may feel far from a Sierra forest. It is not. The pipe connects them. The bill at the tap is one payment. The hold upstream is another. This is where natural climate solutions stop sounding like sponsorship and start looking like operating resilience. A company can buy credits for its inventory and still have an unfunded dependency in the places it relies on. That is not hypocrisy. It is a mismatch between accounting units and operating risk. ## carbon buyers Carbon buyers are real payers. They can move money quickly when a credible protocol, project, registry, buyer, and claim line up. They also buy a bounded thing. The carbon claim has to be measured, additional, monitored, and assigned. That discipline is useful. It is also why the tonne cannot quietly absorb everything else the pathway does. A wetland can buffer floods while storing carbon. A forest can filter water while reducing emissions from avoided conversion. A grassland can hold soil while supporting biodiversity habitat. The carbon credit can pay for the carbon claim. The rest needs a payer with a reason to care. For a coastal version of the same payment problem, see [who pays to keep the tide working](/guide/who-pays-to-keep-the-tide-working). ## the useful order Start with the living system. Then name the pathway. Then name the dependency. Then ask who already pays for failure. That order keeps the work honest. A forest exists before a certificate. A peatland exists before a claim. A coast exists before a budget line. Ensurance funds the pathway; it does not rename the living thing. The map is simple enough: - Public budgets pay where public systems depend on the pathway. - Corporate budgets pay where operations depend on the pathway. - Carbon buyers pay where a measured climate claim fits the pathway. - The hold is funded where dependency is real but the carbon receipt, utility bill, or public program does not cover the condition itself. Post 6 takes that last line and turns it into the funding structure. ## sources - [Griscom et al., Natural climate solutions, PNAS](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710465114). The source for the pathway count, mitigation figures, cost-effectiveness figures, and named co-benefits used here. - [Salesforce, global offices](https://www.salesforce.com/company/locations/). Background on Salesforce’s San Francisco presence. - [Project Drawdown, table of solutions](https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions). Context for climate solution framing, including land and ecosystem measures. - [The Nature Conservancy, natural climate solutions](https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/natural-climate-solutions/). Context on the natural climate solutions frame and its conservation roots. - [Verra, verified carbon standard](https://verra.org/programs/verified-carbon-standard/). Context on carbon-credit program structure and the role of protocols. ## the series - [what natural climate solutions actually are](/guide/what-natural-climate-solutions-actually-are) - [twenty pathways, three verbs](/guide/the-natural-climate-solutions-pathways) - [forests, peat, and mangroves are on the list](/guide/forests-peat-and-mangroves-are-on-the-list) - [the tonne is real and partial](/guide/the-carbon-tonne-is-not-the-climate) - [who pays for natural climate solutions](/guide/who-pays-for-natural-climate-solutions) - [how natural climate solutions get funded](/guide/how-natural-climate-solutions-get-funded)