The role of technology in mobilising private finance for biodiversity

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Sophus zu Ermgassen
Rachel Martin
6th November 2026
2 minutes read

 

 

It’s the decades-old question: How can we attract more private investment into addressing biodiversity loss? For the last couple of years, Prof Florian Egli from the Technical University of Munich has been leading a team including Sophus zu Ermgassen, Rachel Martin, Katharina Wildgruber and Millie Chapman to think about this problem. He’s very experienced in the financing conditions that led to investment in renewable energy deployment and that experience got the team asking: What are the biodiversity analogues of investment in renewables? Renewables are a technology that generates electricity to compete in the existing electricity market and it now generates that electricity cheaper and more efficiently than incumbents. What are the businesses that generate products that sell into existing markets but produce those products with substantially less biodiversity impact than incumbents?

In a new paper in Nature Reviews Biodiversity “The role of technology in mobilizing private finance for biodiversity” the team introduce their new idea of biodiversity-enhancing technologies and substitutes (BETS) and outline their ongoing project led by Katharina Wildgruber to map the ecosystem of technological innovations that substitute for harmful production processes. For example, they provide a brief overview of the world of alternative food products and alternative biomaterials, which substitute for damaging commodities and high-impact materials; solutions for turning invasives into valuable materials; innovative inputs and treatment methods for reducing pollution, etc.

“What’s also super interesting is that these businesses most often don’t call themselves biodiversity businesses. They’re just delivering a technological solution to a production process that aims to be better than the incumbent in some way and the way it reduces biodiversity pressures is a kind of unacknowledged byproduct.” – Sophus zu Ermgassen

Read the full paper here: The role of technology in mobilizing private finance for biodiversity | Nature Reviews Biodiversity

 

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Author

Sophus zu Ermgassen | Nature finance lead, Nature-positive Hub
 Dr Sophus zu Ermgassen is Senior Research Fellow on the Oxford EARTH programme at the Department of Biology and the co-lead of the Biodiversity Finance research stream at the University of Oxford's Nature Positive Hub (with Prof Joe Bull). Sophus is an international research leader in biodiversity finance, nature markets and mitigating the biodiversity impacts of infrastructure, with specialisms in the financing of nature conservation projects and nature market and biodiversity offset design. His key case study systems include biodiversity net gain in England, and the international voluntary biodiversity credit system.

Sophus has won numerous awards for policy impact, including being named by the ENDS Report as one of the 100 most influential environmentalists in the UK in 2022 and 2026 and as the most impactful early career environmental scientist in the country in 2023 by NERC. Sophus runs and lectures on executive education programmes on biodiversity economics across several Oxford departments, and is the director of the Biodiversity Economics module on the University's Biodiversity Conservation and Nature Recovery Master's programme. Sophus consults for businesses, governments, and non-profits on biodiversity finance, biodiversity safeguards and nature markets. His work has featured regularly in the media, with over 100 media stories in the last 5 years. He has had numerous expert advisory roles in different UK government departments and the EU Commission, including in 2025 being named as the Specialist Advisor on Natural Capital to UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee.
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Author

Rachel Martin | DPhil Student
 Growing up in the Appalachian region of the United States gave me the opportunity to develop a deep connection with the natural world and an understanding of the complexities behind its use and management. With a background in Environmental Studies, I take an interdisciplinary approach to addressing complex environmental challenges, seeking to understand the underlying issues and the trade-offs of proposed solutions. This perspective has shaped my research across diverse topics, including conservation technology and innovation, coastal climate adaptation, marine ecosystem indicators with NOAA, harbor seal cognition in Germany, endangered plant recovery in the US, and species distribution models for climate change impacts on lizards in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. By approaching problems from multiple angles, I strive to identify and address systemic drivers of environmental challenges, working toward innovative and meaningful solutions that support positive conservation outcomes.
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